Charleville residents warn traffic ‘experiments’ won’t stop pedestrian deaths

Residents warn proposed traffic changes could worsen safety as HGVs continue to dominate Charleville’s main street

More than 10 pedestrians have died in as many years crossing the main street which is on the Cork-Limerick road (N20) in Charleville. Picture: Dan Linehan

A community group in a north Cork town, which has witnessed unprecedented pedestrian fatalities in recent years, has expressed concern that traffic management solutions being proposed by the local authority may not prevent further deaths in the short term.

More than 10 pedestrians have died over the past decade while crossing the main street on the Cork–Limerick road (N20) in Charleville, most of them elderly people struck by HGVs whose drivers could not see them beneath their cabs.

Members of the Charleville Community Forum have raised concerns about proposals presented to residents, including a one-way system, warning that trialling such measures could delay construction of a long-awaited bypass, which they say is the only meaningful safety solution.

The planned M20 motorway connecting Cork and Limerick remains years away, and in the interim residents are increasingly worried about road safety as around 15,000 vehicles — many of them HGVs — pass through the town centre daily.

The council project team has proposed one-way systems to separate northbound and southbound traffic currently using the N20 Main Street.

This could include constructing a new connection to Bakers Road, which has already become a rat run for traffic seeking to avoid the town centre.

Engineers are also examining potential bypass corridors to the east and west of the town.

The forum’s chairwoman Carmel Healy-Hennigan claimed “toying with the directions of traffic flow seems to be the equivalent of kicking can (the bypass plan) down the road.”

Ms Healy-Hennigan, a retired University of Limerick administrator who has lived in the town all her life, lost a close friend, Margaret Lyons, in a fatal collision there two years ago.

Residents fear the introduction of one-way systems would exacerbate traffic problems in residential areas such as Smith’s Road, Old Cork Road, and Bakers Road.

“These areas are not only residential. They are the locations of our primary and secondary schools and Cork Education and Training Board (CETB), where speeding seems to be the norm and repeated calls for traffic calming measures seem to be ignored,” Ms Healy-Hennigan said.

She said what is needed is the promised bypass and motorway, the design of which began in 2016.

She pointed out that in 2017, the then head of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), Tom Parlon, said “the lack of a motorway between Cork and Limerick was the biggest infrastructural gap in Ireland.” “Since then, the volume of through traffic has increased considerably and is expected to continue to increase,” Ms Healy-Hennigan added.

Another forum member, Claire Scanlan, said that regardless of fuel type, the cumulative impact of constant traffic emissions, idling engines, noise and particulate matter creates continuous exposure for residents, schoolchildren, businesses and pedestrians along the main street.

“While households are rightly encouraged to consider the health impacts of fuel choices, an entire town is effectively required to endure motorway level traffic volumes passing through its centre on a daily basis. Charleville now carries traffic volumes comparable to, and in some cases exceeding sections of motorways,” Ms Scanlan said.

“Charleville does not need a traffic experiment. It needs a bypass,” she added.