Re: Re: Cork Transport
How about this from today’s quondam Cork Examiner:
18 September 2006
‘Magic circle’ not a traffic solution
AFTER reading about the impact of a slip-road on Watergrasshill, north of Cork city, and the proposal of a roundabout as the solution (Irish Examiner, September 14), I feel this is not the answer to the village’s problems.
Why spend millions of taxpayers’ money on a new motorway and then effectively scupper it by interrupting the flow of traffic with a roundabout in the middle.
This would create bottlenecks on a road designed to eliminate them and increase the likelihood of accidents as fast-moving traffic must slow down and merge with other traffic at the roundabout. Anyway, most Irish drivers seem totally incapable of correctly negotiating roundabouts anywhere.
Putting one in the motorway at Watergrasshill would also increase environmental costs as vehicles must accelerate to cruising speed after they have gone through, using significantly more fuel. This is a ‘solution’ most people, and especially the motorists paying for it, would not want.
Take, for example, the roundabouts on the South Link road in Cork city. Surely people have learned by now how poorly they cope with traffic. Their only real function is to impede traffic flow. It was implied in your report that Watergrasshill community council was consulted on the initial bypass.
If this was the case, then it seems a little short-sighted of those involved in that consultation to have accepted the slip-road in the first place.
It would not have taken much to realise that if local traffic was going to grow significantly, and if they were worried about its effect on residents, they should either have objected to the location of the slip-road in first place or not allowed a new estate to be built right beside it. Doing neither, and then complaining about motorists using a road they have funded through road tax, seems like them wanting to have their cake and eat it.
May I suggest that instead of campaigning for the construction of a roundabout at taxpayers’ expense, would if not be better to concentrate on abolishing the toll that will drive all those extra vehicles into the village?
The people of Watergrasshill are also taxpayers, and I’m sure many would agree they have already paid in taxes — direct and indirect, over and over again — for roads such as this.
The only people really to benefit from the tolls are the private individuals operating them.
Even if the removal of the toll gates is not feasible, the construction of a second slip-road to join up with the old road on the northside of the village would be preferable to the building of yet another ‘circle of pain’ on the main highway.
Having had for many years the questionable claim to the country’s only ‘magic roundabout’ at the Kinsale Road intersection, and the subsequent dumbfounding attempts to copy its inanities at Wilton and Bishopstown, the people of Cork truly deserve better.
Kieran Donnelly
Lr Beechwood Avenue
Ranelagh
Dublin 6
