Cork's South Ring Road to get more crash response teams to avoid gridlock

Tailbacks in both directions after a road traffic accident on the N40 (South Ring Road) in 2019. Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) said it expects to see an immediate improvement on the N40 South Ring Road in facilitating gardaí with moving or removing vehicles in a timely fashion. File picture: Larry Cummins

Extra crash response teams and tow trucks have been deployed at peak hours to accident blackspots on Cork City’s busiest road to clear incidents quickly and prevent gridlock.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) said it expects to see an immediate improvement on the N40 South Ring Road in facilitating gardaí with moving or removing vehicles in a timely fashion.

Changes to road markings to streamline the road’s various merging locations are also planned over the coming weeks in a bid to make the road safer.

The details are contained in a TII response to a request from Labour Cllr Peter Horgan, chair of Cork City Council’s transport committee, for urgent action on the various traffic issues affecting the N40, where a spate of recent crashes have had a major knock-on effect on traffic across the city.

TII said it has recently increased the deployment of incident response resources on the Cork network, with peak hour deployment at the Bloomfield interchange which it described as a “prevalent location of disruptive incidents”.

Improvements to the merging arrangements at Bloomfield westbound are also planned as part of the M28 Cork to Ringaskiddy road, with Cabinet approval of the main construction contract awaited, it said.

However, in the longer term, it said an engineering team is working on a project to improve the safety and reliability of the N40 at its 11 junctions between the Dunkettle Interchange and the Poulavone junction, with potential localised and targeted interventions likely at junctions, merges, and weaving locations, with speed limits and signage also forming part of the review.

Driver behaviour

Mr Horgan welcomed the update but said addressing driver behaviour is critical.

“These measures are welcome and I hope that they will go some way to improving safety for our commuters,” he said.

“But we are still at a point where we need additional gardaí deployed to the Cork roads policing unit, and at these crash sites, to deter further crashes.

“So much of this is due to driver behaviour so we now need to put out the deterrent to force that driver behaviour change.”

TII said it does not not favour fixed signage as an educational tool and pointed out that driver education initiatives are the responsibility of the Road Safety Authority.