Meeting hears of continued traffic chaos in Mayo town

A ‘perfect storm’ of bad weather and traffic jams led to a chaotic return to school for parents, staff and pupils at schools in Ballinrobe.

Councillors in the Claremorris Municipal District said solutions must be found to ongoing traffic congestion at school times in the south Mayo town with the recent first day back at St Josephs Primary School and Ballinrobe Community School providing examples of the recurring problems.

Cllr Damien Ryan called for an update on the Cong and Ballinrobe bypass projects and called for efforts to be now made to alleviate the traffic woes in the interim period.

Area engineer Conrad Harley said the Ballinrobe scheme is currently at Phase 0 Scope and Pre-Appraisal with the Project Outline Document to be completed by Q4 2024 and a preferred route for the Cong scheme is due to be determined in Q2 or Q3 2025.

Cllr Ryan said both projects need a timeframe and an alleviation route would be needed and he formally proposed someone from the National Roads Design Office (NRDO) attend their next meeting. Cllr Ryan described the situation at the two schools as ‘an absolute nightmare’.

“We can’t keep pushing the boat down the road on this, we need to get someone from the NRDO in” he said.

Cllr Michael Burke said these projects need to be progressed as people are currently waiting over 45 minutes in their cars coming through Ballinrobe because of school traffic.

“We need to solve people getting out of their cars at the school, the dropdown area is almost a full-time car park. The buses have had to drop off pupils on the roadside which is so dangerous,” he said.

Cllr Burke suggested a link road from the Claremorris road to the Kilmaine road would solve a lot of the problems.

Mr Harley said the recent first day back at school was an example of the issues with traffic in Ballinrobe currently with poor weather on the day causing many parents to drop their kids off at school with the car.

“It was the perfect storm, the first day back to school and bad weather. People were abandoning their cars on the roadside and going in and causing a lot of consternation.”

He added the Active Travel scheme for Ballinrobe would help alleviate some of the problems.