Improvements to Sligo’s Inner Relief Road traffic lights urged

By Philip Rooney, The Sligo Champion

The January meeting of Sligo County Council heard calls for the local authority to carry out a survey of the traffic light system on the Inner Relief Road amid claims drivers are reading the lights wrongly which may cause accidents.”

The motion proposed by Cllr Donal Gilroy said: “Lights at Junction S7 Southbound remain red and there are no cars between S7 and S6. Vehicles regularly see the S6 light go green and proceed forward risking impact with vehicles proceeding from Lord Edward Street.”

The motion continued, “In the outside lane at R291 Rosses Point Rd junction south bound cars who are proceeding south regularly seem to only see the full red light on their right, which is in effect a red light for the right turn lane. Can this be changed to a red turn arrow? Currently the driver can have three green straight ahead arrows on the left and one on the right with three full red lights on the right nearest to the driver and causing confusion.”

Cllr Donal Gilroy referred to an incident he witnessed over the Christmas period when he was stopped at red lights. “The lights at the Dunnes Stores turn-off at Adelaide Street changed green and the car next to me shot forward and there was a car coming out at The Coach Lane and how that person coming out missed them I honestly don’t know. I thought there was going to be carnage in front of my eyes. I have seen it a number of times, I have on occasions myself started to go and then realised ‘no, that’s their light’. I welcome that there is a dampener going on and that will deflect that light and it won’t be seen from so far back.

"Also, at the Rosses Point junction. For some reason there are people sitting in the outside lane when the red light is for the right turn out to Cartron and they think because it is a full red light they can't proceed straight on. They are sitting there and there are cars behind them getting frustrated because everybody on the inside is passing them and it could cause an accident. They are just two things that I have noticed through my own driving over the Christmas and over the last number of months.” Thanking Director of Services Jim Molloy, Cllr Gilroy said, “ I’m glad to see one of them is being acted on straight away and the other one is to be looked at."

Cllr Arthur Gibbons gave his backing to the motion saying, “I agree with everything you said but there are other issues. My major concern at the moment is at the bottom of Church Hill, beside our own Sinn Fein office. I travel that road every morning to bring the young fella to the Gaelscoil and sometimes it takes half an hour to get down. The problem that is happening there is, when you come down to the bottom of Church Hill, traffic is tailed back to the far gate at The Showgrounds and it is only leaking through. You have a massive amount of juggernaut trucks coming down and sitting in the yellow box and that leaves traffic stuck on Church Hill because they cannot get around the corner. The most dangerous end of it is when you come around that corner and you are in traffic, you might be the third or fourth car back and you go around that corner, you cannot see the pedestrian crossing green man coming on and I am surprised some child hasn’t been killed there. It is like a blind spot and it is something that needs to be addressed.”

Cllr Ann Higgins also voiced her support saying, “I raised the issue of the lights at ‘The Coach Lane junction’ at the May Municipal meeting and to be fair to the roads department they were working on that.

The debate on the motion concluded with Cllr Gilroy saying the N4/N16/N15 junction to Rosses Point and Ash Lane is the second busiest junction in Ireland.

He added as Cllr Gibbons said, “It only takes one person to block up a yellow box and I don’t read a lot in the papers about court cases taken for people sitting in yellow boxes.”

Article Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.