Going in circles on roundabout issue

(Above) The Castle Street, Pearse Street junction worked better when there was a roundabout at it, local councillors say..

The will they/won’t they saga over the restoration of a roundabout at the Castle Street Pearse Street junction in Mullingar town centre isn’t going to be sorted any time soon it emerged last week when Cllr Andrew Duncan raised the subject for discussion at the September meeting of the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District.

Cllr Duncan requested an update on the status of the multi-modal Mullingar Transport Study, and was told that a draft brief will be sent to the National Transport Authority (NTA) in the next week – but the study is to continue for the next 12 months.

The study is intended to identify further improvements to the urban environment and short, medium and long-term solutions to enable the sustainable growth of Mullingar.

Cllr Duncan told the meeting that his question was originally in relation to the issues with the town centre traffic problems.

“But because it had already been highlighted in a previous motion by Cllr Glynn, then this particular motion had to be reworded,” he said, going on to explain that the issue with which he was predominantly concerned is the town centre traffic, and his view was that the roundabout at McDonald’s should be restored.

Continuing, he asked what measures Westmeath County Council intend to take when they get this study, to alleviate the bottleneck that’s been created at the McDonald’s junction.

Director of services, Deirdre Reilly, said the only way to answer that was to point out that the council would need to wait for the report.

“Obviously, we’d be having input into the report as we’re doing it over the next 12 months.

So, there will be active surveys ongoing on streets and traffic lights signals will be surveyed, and there will be traffic counts and pedestrian counts,” she said.

Ms Reilly went on to stress that the survey was multi-modal: “So it’s not just about the car, but it’s about the pedestrians, and other users in the streets of Mullingar.”