Thumbs down to new bridge in Limerick

TWO northside councillors have come together to give a big thumbs down to a new bridge across the Park Canal.

Cllrs Kieran O’Hanlon, Fianna Fail and Conor Sheehan, Labour, have both urged council bosses to go back to the drawing board in their plans for the new structure.

Under plans to be submitted to An Bord Pleanala, the new bridge will connect Lower Park Road to the Canal Bank to facilitate two-way traffic. It will be situated a short distance away from the existing hump back bridge.

Both members feel it will turn the neighbouring streets into “rat runs”.

Cllr O'Hanlon said: “I don't see the necessity for another bridge over the canal. I have serious reservations about encouraging additional traffic through residential areas. I live in Rhebogue where hundreds of kids go to school every morning in quite dangerous conditions. You can see excessive speeding by people who are obviously using it as a rat run. As a resident in Rhebogue, I do not want any additional traffic encouraged through an area which is residential.”

Cllr Sheahan said a new bridge would be “excessive, visually obtrusive and unnecessary.”

“What I don't want is all the traffic being encouraged to come up through Lower Park and Rhebogue. We already have safety issues with pedestrians. This is only going to encourage more vehicular traffic. Things are often so bad in the morning, if you're coming the opposite way of the traffic, it's often backed up so much at Mike Madden's bridge, it's impossible to get up to Lower Park. This is going to turn our two neighbourhoods into rat runs. I have deep concerns about it.”

Cllr Sheahan believes the reason the application has gone before An Bord Pleanala​ is because had it gone through part eight, there is no way local councillors would have approved it.

”We all think it’s a daft proposal,” he concluded.

A council spokesperson says the authority does not comment on live planning applications.