OPINION (AN COLÚN): The traffic bottleneck situation in Birr is far from acceptable

I OFTEN find myself trying to get onto the main thoroughfare through Birr (the N52) at 8 o'clock in the morning on my journey to the swimming pool. Every weekday morning there is a high volume of traffic coming in both directions. Normally, the traffic is slow-moving but rarely does it become a snail-like vehicular jam. Frequently the drivers on the main road are very polite and will stop to allow me to drive out from my minor road onto the main road (it's refreshing to experience decency and politeness from others in our busy and preoccupied world).

Sometimes, I become impatient after a short period of time waiting for both lanes to become sufficiently light in traffic to allow me to turn to the right towards the swimming pool; instead I turn left onto the lane leading away from the pool, do a 180 degree turn around the roundabout and back onto the lane going to the pool.

Sometimes, on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, the traffic on the town's main thoroughfare becomes sufficiently high to reach the status of those dreaded words, "traffic jam." When I am stuck in this it's frequently made me late for my appointments, which doesn't irritate me but can irritate others. If cleanliness is next to Godliness for some, being on time is similarly deified for others.

The volume of traffic passing through Birr has increased hugely over the last decade or so. Heavy traffic, even if it is slowly but not too badly progressing in the manner of my 8am experiences, is an unpleasant thing. In aesthetic terms it neither looks nor sounds nice. It produces noxious fumes and is associated in our minds with the dreaded and hated long commute (where we feel part of some mindless, soulless herd heading towards our office desks). If we are walking in a woodland or beside a lake next to a busy road the sound of the traffic detracts from our experience of the natural world - magically remove the busy road and all of us would automatically feel better.

It's obvious that most of this Birr traffic is not stopping in the town but is passing through on the way to somewhere else; therefore, contrary to what many retailers might fear if a bypass was to be created then it wouldn't adversely affect their income. The idea of creating a bypass around Birr goes back many years, at least to the 1980s. The concept is divisive, but I've a hunch the greater percentage would think it a good thing.

Every town I've read about which has opted for a bypass to solve the bottleneck problem has been happy with the result. Take Macroom for example. In December the first section of the 280 million Euro Macroom to Ballyvourney bypass on the N22 opened. The new bypass is projected by TII to cut travel times between Cork and Killarney by about twenty minutes. The new road contains two lanes in each direction, separated by a steel barrier. The TII says the bypass will remove 40% of the 13,000 vehicles, including 700 heavy goods vehicles, that pass through the centre of the town daily, causing delays that can add three quarters of an hour to your journey.

Locals are noticing the early benefits of the opening of the first section. A local undertaker told the press that he remembered talk about building a bypass as far back as 1969. He said a delivery man told him the new bypass is great. The delivery man has gained an hour a day because he's able to find parking faster and to cross the street quicker. “Even in our own business,” the undertaker added, “we can get to the graveyard now in six minutes as opposed to thirteen minutes before.”

Locals notice the streets are considerably quieter. Now they can take or make a phone call on Main Street or The Square. Before they couldn't do this because the traffic was too noisy. “Now you can talk to people,” said one.

A flower retailer said she's noticing new customers coming into the shop because it's easier to get parking on the streets. “The street is definitely quieter traffic-wise,” she remarked, “but we are seeing more people walking around the town and people coming into us who never came in before - people who are telling us that they were always rushing to get in and get out but now they can find parking take their time more. It's helped too with deliveries - our deliveries are getting in and out faster because they can find space and we even notice it ourselves -even my own girls with our deliveries, they can nip in and out rather than getting stuck in traffic and taking ten or fifteen minutes to do a delivery down the town.”

Like Birr, traffic in Macroom was especially heavy on a Friday afternoon. On bank holiday weekends there could be huge tailbacks, which made the town a nightmare to navigate and discouraged passersby from stopping off. “There is still traffic coming through the town,” said one local, “but it is moving, and parking spaces are opening up and people are not resentful. There was a sort of resentment over the traffic but that seems to have dissipated. People were worried about a dip in business but that hasn't happened so far.”