Roads chief sorry for Cork Jack Lynch tunnel chaos

The head of Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) has apologised for a raft of failings which allowed minor flooding near Cork’s Jack Lynch tunnel to bring city traffic to a standstill.

CEO Michael Nolan said a full review of tunnel procedures and protocols has been ordered after the serious under-performance of the tunnel contractor on December 3. And he said a series of short and long-term recommendations will be implemented to ensure such chaos does not happen again.

He made his comments in a damning report to Cork City Council last night after council chief executive Ann Doherty expressed serious concerns following the unprecedented city-wide traffic chaos. Traffic was gridlocked for hours after one northbound lane of the N40 on the approach to the tunnel was closed due to flooding in the left lane.

The report said while the flooding was identified at 10.15am, tunnel operators, Egis Road and Tunnel Operations (ERTO), misdiagnosed the cause, failed to investigate other possible causes for another five hours, and made no attempt to deal with the flooding by pumping the water away.

They did not contact drainage contractors until 5pm who could not get to the site for another four hours because of the traffic chaos.

They also failed to properly advise the city council and gardaí about the problem which was ultimately found to have been caused by leaves and silt blocking a drain on the Mahon side.

“By not dealing effectively with what transpired to be a minor drain blockage, they allowed what should have been no more than a short- lived disruption to northbound traffic on the South Ring Road to develop into an incident that caused severe traffic disruption across the city from the evening peak onwards,” the report found.

“To compound the technical errors and operational inaction, neither Cork City Council, the Motorway Traffic Control Centre nor TII were informed of the incident during the day.

“Moreover, no effective communication was put in place to keep An Garda Síochána, other key service providers, local media or the public at large in Cork informed of developments during the course of the day, which might have allowed the gardaí to deploy resources to try to mitigate the growing congestion.”

It prompted calls from councillors for the ERTO management contract, which was awarded in October 2014, to be handed back to City Hall.

Lord Mayor Chris O’Leary said there was never an incident as extreme as this when the tunnel was under council management.