50km per hour speed limit sought for busy Offaly road

Independent Councillor, Sean O' Brien, has made a submission to Offaly County Council recommending a 50km per hour speed limit for the section of the Tullamore to Kilbeggan Road at Durrow.

Referring to the fact that no funding has been provided by goverment over the past two years for the long-promised new relief road linking Tullamore and the M6 Motorway, Cllr O'Brien said "something has to be urgently done" in the meantime to slow down traffic on the busy section of road and to protect the people of Durrow.

"There are high volumes of traffic on this road and at a constant high speed" he said "and local people use this road every day to access their homes, bring children to school and to use the Church, graveyard and Community Centre."

Cllr O'Brien has proposed a new 50km per hour speed limit for one kilometre on the approach to the Durrow junction on both the Tullamore and Kilbeggan sides. He also pointed out that "major traffic calming measures" will need to be installed in order to control the speed.

"I will be proposing that there will be an allocation made in the roads budget for next year to do this work and that it will be high on the programme of works for next year" concluded Cllr O' Brien, who added that the relief road between Tullamore and Kilbeggan will take "many years to complete."