I arranged a meeting with all members of the Kanturk/Mallow Municipal District of Cork County Council this morning with the Engineers involved in order to review what has happened to date and future plans for the traffic lights issue in Mallow Town presently.
Starting off with some good news, which is as most locals will have noticed; the traffic is much better since last Wednesday. Cork County Council has employed a specialised company dealing with traffic lights issues over the last week and also has employed the services of an expert from Co. Meath who regularly works with councils such as Cork City Council and Dublin City Council on traffic lights.
They first looked at the lights on the bridge this week and found that signalling and infrastructure inside these lights were ancient – apparently it’s there since 2000 and was never replaced. What needed to be replaced was done on Tuesday evening (I believe they didn’t finish until after midnight working on them!) and the lights here have been running very smooth since.
Another issue that has been identified at this location is if you are coming over the bridge from town and turning right. We have agreed today that this area would be re-lined to take people turning right up further so cars behind going up Ballydaheen can keep going straight. After these works, three cars going right should be able to queue up and cars going straight should still be able to drive on up Ballydaheen or go left out towards Kilavullen!
On the plaza and Spa road lights, it has been agreed that the experts employed will now link these lights to the new system at the bridge. It will also only allow a pedestrian sequence on the plaza and spa road on demand i.e. when the button is pressed. Before, every sequence had a pedestrian sequence included which is very time consuming as you can imagine and added to the delay of traffic going through here. However, it is important there is some pedestrian access when needed.
There will also be a yellow box placed in front of the junction at the Spa in order to allow people turning right to do so without delay and the hatching (crossed white lines) at the Plaza side of the Kranky Barber Shop will be removed to allow people pass out people turning right at the Spa junction on their inside. Cork County Council will consider removing a car space here if needs be but will see how this works first.
This is all to happen within the next 2-3 weeks so hopefully once done, we will have some co-ordination going forward in the traffic lights at the bottom of the town.
Cork County Council have relieved the previous contractor of their duties as they simply did not carried out what was asked of them in the contract provided. This contractor has not been fully paid either so I would expect Cork County Council will loose very little by the employment of this additional experts.
Here is hoping things will improve folks. I will keep you update further over the coming weeks as we see more progress here.
My own personal view is things will never be perfect here until we get the Fermoy/Mitchelstown/Dungarvan traffic out of the bottom of the town and the only way of this is by getting the Mallow Relief Road for the town. But that fight is for another day.
Thank you again for your patience on this matter,
John Paul
John Paul O’ Shea MCC
Chairman of Kanturk/Mallow Municipal District
Cork County Council
