New Laois bus stop in Portlaoise completed ahead of schedule

placeholder image — New bus stop in Portlaoise.

Second Dublin Road bus stop to be completed in a year

Work appears to be completed on a second new bus stop on the Dublin Road in Portlaoise with weeks to spare.

Laois County Council issued a notice in the middle of March advising people to expect traffic delays until late April on the site of the stop at Laurel Road.

The Temporary Traffic Management advisory for the R425 / Dublin Road at Kilminchy to facilitate work on the new bus stop on the inbound side of the busy road covered a period from March 13 to April 30 from 8 am to 6 pm each day.

However, workers moved off-site on Friday, April 5 and the last of the safety cones were removed on Monday, April 8.

The new bus stop is the second to be delivered on the Dublin Road in the past six months. After some delays, work began in September 2023 on the construction of the Kilminchy bus stop on the outbound side of the road. It took substantially longer to complete than the newly built structure. More below picture.

The bus stop is one of several funded by the National Transport Authority (NTA). The Portlaoise projects were delayed by the NTA after they raised the standard of the stops to be fully wheelchair accessible. The latest bus stop was part of a bundle approved that received funding in early 2023 that also included two in Mountrath and one in Ballybrittas. The combined costs of the civil works, for these five stops, is €220,000.

A further €500,000 was secured in early 2024 by the Council for bus stop enhancement works via the NTA Active Travel Programme.