Traffic chaos feared in Cork as massive housing estates come online

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

With thousands of new houses being built around the towns of Midleton and Carrigtwohill, the roads of East Cork, including the N25 national route, are going to need serious upgrades to deal with the volume of traffic, local councillors have warned.

Speaking at this week’s meeting of Cobh Municipal District, Cllr Anthony Barry put forward a motion calling for an upgrade to the Carrigane Road going into Carrigtwohill.

“Due to the abandonment of the N25 upgrade, huge volumes of traffic will use this road, which is already taking more traffic than it was originally designed for,” he said.

“We all know the N25 [upgrade] scheme has been shelved by the previous minister of transport and hopefully it'll be re-looked at again. However, at the moment, there's potentially 2,500 houses being planned for Waterrock and 2,500 houses being planned for Carrigtwohill North.

“A thousand houses are now being built and have been occupied in Carrigtwohill. And the pressure that this is putting up between Carrigtwohill and Midleton is absolutely crazy,” the Fine Gael councillor said.

Waterrock is a development of 2,500 houses being built north of the N25 between Carrigtwohill and Midleton. A new road connecting Waterrock and the Northern Midleton relief road and a railway station are both planned but in the meantime Cllr Barry fears that traffic from the new housing estates will be funnelled into Carrigtwohill.

“This is a situation that's going to get worse and worse to the extent now that I fundamentally believe we should be looking at any planning application in the area and probably looking is the infrastructure there to support it given the absence of the funding for the N25 and the URDF [Urban Regeneration and Development Fund] funding. We just can't have that volume of traffic coming in to Carrigtwohill,” he said.

Cllr Sheila O’Callaghan seconded Cllr Barry’s motion. “We're all very familiar with the issues about the N25 upgrade and the lack of funding being allocated for it. Carrigtwohill is destined to become a very densely populated area. And regardless of the schedule of the trains and cycleways and all of that, we still have to live in the real world that each house will have a minimum of one car.”

“And if you have 5,000 houses added into an area it’s bound to cause chaos with the demands on the roads. That road isn't built for that volume of traffic and it's just going to be a big issue going forward so obviously something will have to be done to alleviate the situation,” the Fianna Fáil councillor said.

Responding to the motion, Cork County Council said it acknowledges the concerns raised regarding traffic volumes on the Carrigane road and will examine appropriate mitigating measures, including junction improvements for traffic entering Carrigtwohill. The local authority said it will also continue to engage with Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) to address the impact of the N25 upgrade not proceeding.