Letter to the Editor: New road fails to take any account of local needs or reality

Dear Sir - The council's "no quick fix" response to the mayhem at the new LDR4 junction is incredible.

This is not a traffic flow issue that the council inherited nor did the bedlam evolve over the years. The council designed and built the bedlam in real-time.

"No quick fix" is an excuse to avoid actually taking decisive action, so instead they've created a narrative and now they're hiding behind the solution's "complexity."

Who created the problem? The council's narrative, "Blame the victims - it is driver behavior and pedestrian safety issues that have created the bedlam, definitely not us."

No thought of course given to pedestrian safety for those living in Liscarton, Lady's Road or Knockumber, turning the area into a "rat run" as motorists use it in an attempt to avoid the new junction. One of the main issues I believe is insufficient lane capacity.

Just one example of insufficient lane capacity are the traffic lights at Bailey Hill. The lane for traffic turning right towards the hospital fills and causes a tailback and it then blocks through traffic heading to the Kells Road. This then creates gridlock at the Andy Connolly roundabout. Instead of recognising the problem and addressing it, they compounded it by repeating the mistake a few hundred metres down the road. The insufficient lane capacity at the Kells Road wasn't caused by "space limitations" but by a policy mindset that promotes a "national blanket" model for construction that fails to take any account of local needs or reality.

Yours,

Donal Mulcahy,

Navan.