‘There just isn’t enough money’ - Laois unable to keep up with speeding issues
Laois County Council acknowledged the major demand for traffic calming measures in Laois
Laois County Council said they are “inundated” with requests for traffic calming measures across the county.
Issues with speeding across the Laois road network were raised at the July meeting of Laois County Council.
Cllr Paddy Buggy highlighted that many rural roads in the county have seen an increase in traffic in recent years due to more developments taking place in otherwise quiet areas and this may be further exacerbated by the recent rezoning of lands by the council.
The Portlaoise councillor urged that more traffic calming measures should be taken on these roads to tackle speeding.
Going a step further, Cllr Conor Bergin added that speeding is perhaps “the single biggest issue” in Laois.
“Every single road people are looking for speed ramps and traffic calming. I’m getting it every single day and the problem is the resources we have just don’t match the demand that’s there,” the Fine Gael councillor argued.
He explained that traffic calming measures are taken out of discretionary funds and just one or two speed ramps can “eat up a large portion of the funding.”
“There just isn’t enough money there. We need to address this now, the public demand is huge. We need a dedicated road safety unit in the council,” Cllr Bergin insisted.
Director of Services at Laois County Council, Simon Walton, agreed that speed is a major problem across Laois and said that the council is “inundated” with requests for traffic calming measures from the public.
“It doesn’t matter what the speed limit is, people are requesting traffic calming measures throughout the county,” Mr Walton said.
“It is also the case that the cost associated with introducing those is completely invariant to the financial resources available to the council.”
He assured that when the Roads SPC reconvenes they intend on examining the potential development of County Laois standards for the introduction of traffic calming measures in those more rural areas.
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