No school crossing for Stradbally road dubbed 'absolute chaos' – unless church crossing is removed
Crossing for children walking to school from housing estate cannot be installed unless existing crossing is removed, TII says
Heavy traffic travelling at high speed on the N80 Carlow Road in Stradbally has led to calls for road safety measures to safeguard children making their way to school.
“The traffic coming down the Carlow Road – it’s absolutely flying down there,” said Cllr Paschal McEvoy, speaking at a recent meeting of the Graiguecullen-Portarlington Municipal District.
He called for a pedestrian crossing to be built at The Green to facilitate children from the newly-built Carraig Glas housing estate crossing the road on their way to school.
“I was asked to attend a meeting with the residents in relation to this. It’s very dangerous,” he said.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) is the body responsible for building and maintaining Ireland’s national roads. The road design section of Laois County Council responded that there is an existing signal-controlled crossing to the north west of Cosby school. According to TII, the existing crossing would have to be removed to install a crossing at The Green, to keep traffic flowing.
The council continued that removing the existing crossing is not recommended because it serves the churches on one side of the road and Stradbally Afterschool Centre on the other.
The council highlighted that the church congregations contain more mobility-impaired pedestrians than the cohort of children and parents travelling to and from school.
Cllr Vivienne Phelan noted that Cosby School was met with a similar response when it requested a crossing outside the school: “They were making out that everyone going to mass is using the pedestrian crossing outside mass, but my point would be: there’s a substantial carpark behind the church, and any older people I know that go to mass, they park their car in there and simply go into the church. They don’t need to cross the road at all. I think now, the new housing estate, there’s a lot of young children in there, it’s a very dangerous road.”
She continued: “I wonder, are they coming out at the wrong time of day assessing these things, maybe in the afternoon, they don’t see the absolute chaos that’s going on there every school morning.”
Cllr McEvoy highlighted that the new estate comprises 26 houses, and there will be approximately 50 or 60 children residing there, who will be travelling to school on foot.
He suggested that TII place a warning on the road into Stradbally or install a traffic ramp to slow the traffic, continuing: “I would ask them, if not a pedestrian crossing, to try and come up with some form of traffic management there.”
Cllr Aisling Moran suggested placing the pedestrian crossing at Court Square, where the national road would not be affected and the council could install a crossing without consulting TII. This suggestion was returned to the road design section for consideration.