Dear Editor,
A recent article in the Irish Times on Saturday 16th of February on ‘Traffic in Dublin and Going Nowhere’ leaves out where one of the blackest traffic jams starts. My friends in Rathcoole Village, the last village on the N7 to Limerick and Cork, have informed me of their absolute persecution each morning trying to get to work. Around 7.30am each morning traffic rolls down the Kilteel Road having by-passed Naas through country roads to avoid the M7/ N7 hitting the growing urban estates in Rathcoole and causing absolute consternation entering the Main Street of Rathcoole. At the junction of the Kilteel Road and Main Street is a well known pub and restaurant. Just 25 metres from the entrance to this premises is the second entrance to Rathcoole Village from the N7. Some of the users of this entrance are calling in for breakfast to the pub/ restaurant. Others have by-passed the first entrance to the village because that first entrance has has a half mile long traffic jam back to the City West junction to the N82.
The Main Street in Rathcoole has major housing estates to the left and right with people trying to get out of these estates on to the Main Street, very difficult due to the traffic jam they face. To make matters worse Rathcoole’s major primary school and secondary school are located on the Kilteel Road just west of Main Street and this, combined with the traffic from the developing housing estates just off the Kilteel Road, make the traffic situation worse again. A resident of Broadfield, one of those new estates, told me last week it can take her 45 minutes to make the journey from her house to the flyover the N7 on the city side of the village, a journey of approximately 1 mile. The traffic jam goes on till about 9.30am each working day.
The majority of the traffic coming off the N7 is actually going to big industrial estates at Greenogue between Rathcoole and Newcastle Village. A situation arises at the flyover across the N7 where two traffic jams, one from the city direction and the other from Main Street, Rathcoole meet head to head, a recipe for chaos, part of Dublin’s traffic chaos and much worse than many people have to cope with. Locally the solution has to be a combination of new infrastructure: much better public transport, a new flyover the N7 on the western side of Rathcoole and the greater use of strategic development zoning which insists on the provision of infrastructure at the same time, or, in advance of new housing. Indeed, this approach is required throughout Dublin and elsewhere in the country.
Yours faithfully,
Robert Dowds,
Labour local election candidate,
Clondalkin/ Rathcoole Ward.
