“INSUFFICIENT” road width is causing difficulty at peak school times outside Coláiste Muire.
An appeal for the Ennis Municipal District to work alongside An Garda Síochána and the secondary school to devise a traffic management plan for College Rd was issued by Cllr Ann Norton (IND).
Possible solutions will be examined between the Ennis MD and the Gardaí, senior executive engineer Eamon O’Dea responded. “It should be noted that College Road is a residential road where a number of the house do not have front driveways, therefore at peak school times there is insufficient road width on the College Road between the School and Sandfield Park to cater for two way traffic and car parking”.
Speaking at the December meeting of the Ennis MD, Cllr Norton detailed, “it is like every school that we have issues when it comes to dropping off and picking up of students, it is quite a narrow road, there’s quite a number of houses in the area and one of the issues is that there is a lot of elderly people living in that particular area, the demand for parking and picking students up is causing a lot of problems”.
She acknowledged that efforts had been made to change bus times to try alleviate congestion but felt more needed to be done. “There is a lot more children attending the Coláiste than there was a number of years ago, there’s a lot of young students being picked up. We don’t want to see accidents happening similar to what happened in St Flannan’s, safety has to be the foremost priority around schools”.
Recalling that he witnessed the congestion “first hand on many occasions,” Cllr Pat Daly commented, “College Rd a very tight road, all other schools have sufficient roads around for parking. I sympathise with the residents there on a daily basis, a traffic management plan would be very welcome”.
Importance of devising a traffic management plan was also stressed by Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG).
