Park-and-ride facilities and a new public bus service are being sought as interventions to ease gridlock in Letterkenny.
Donegal County Council has been urged to seek extra resources from the National Transport Authority (NTA) for short-term solutions while the Letterkenny Transport Plan is being implemented.
“We cannot allow the people of Letterkenny to be hostages to cars and gridlock,” Cllr Gerry McMonagle told the October meeting of the Letterkenny-Milford Municipal District.
“It is very damaging when you see people posting up on social media saying not to go into Letterkenny. It will get worse.”
Councillor Gerry McMonagle said the solutions were so urgent that they were ‘needed next week’.
“We have talked a lot here and members have brought motions about park and ride and the town bus service – but it seems to have come to nothing,” he said.
“The pressures our teams are under, we need extra resources to help and assist them. I would like our members to meet with the NTA – we could go to Dublin or they could come to Letterkenny to see the difficulties for themselves.
“This town, with the exception of two roads, is the same as it was 40 years ago, but there has been a significant increase in traffic. Twenty years ago, we sat here and spoke about the Bonagee Link. How often are we chatting here about relief roads?”
Councillor McMonagle was advised that engagement with and funding from the NTA is ongoing ‘across a multitude of projects’, including ongoing discussions to enable a viable town-based bus service in Letterkenny.
In a response, the local authority said that, with the NTA support coming alongside funding from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) and Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF), the delivery of funding was already ‘at capacity’.
Councillor McMonagle said: “The Town Bus service is very important. We need to provide viable alternatives to people using their cars. There is no sense in talking about the Town Bus because it’s not there, we don’t have one.”
He said: “We are one of six regional areas regarding growth into a city, but we need to see the colour of their money and we need to get investment.
“We cannot allow the people of Letterkenny to be hostages to cars and gridlock. It is very damaging when you see people posting up not to go into Letterkenny. It will get worse.
A previous motion from Cllr Michael McBride heard a call for the Bonagee link bridge to be prioritised in the Ten-T project due to the extreme traffic pressure in Letterkenny.
Cllr McMonagle said: “Until bridges are built, we need to put in place active travel pathways. Two things that we could do with is a park and ride system and a bus service, but you can’t have one without the other: There is no sense in getting people to park on the outskirts of town if they can’t then get into town.”
Councillor Donal Coyle said officials needed to decrease the volume of traffic going into Letterkenny on a daily basis.
“We could set ourselves a target over a certain period to decrease the number of cars and vehicles by maybe 10 per cent,” Councillor Coyle said.
“If that was done, on the Four Lane alone we would reduce the number of vehicles by 3,500 on a daily basis. There is land earmarked as part of the Ten-T project and I don’t see why that land couldn’t be developed in the short term. We don’t have a local transport system and we are so dependent on the car because there is no alternative at the moment.
“We need to look at shorter term solutions – look at how long the stretch of road from the Dry Arch to the Polestar, which is just over 1km, has taken.”
Donegal County Council’s Director of Community Development and Planning Service, Liam Ward, said that Donegal County Council will follow up on a request to meet with the NTA. He said the Council executive had met with the NTA in July and the body was ‘prepared to work with us’. It is hoped that the Letterkenny Transport Plan will be adopted in November.
