Portlaw village reaching ‘crisis point’ due to traffic congestion

Calls have been made to address heavy traffic congestion in Portlaw Village, a situation which “is getting out of control”.

Local councillor Declan Clune has said he is receiving numerous complaints weekly from concerned locals.

“It’s getting towards crisis point at the moment at Queen Street,” he said.

“It’s constantly congested because there seems to be more vehicles using the shortcut from the N25, through Carroll's Cross, the five cross roads, through the village over to Fiddown and over to south Kilkenny or south Tipperary.

“Particularly at Queen Street, there’s been vehicles damaged by oncoming traffic and there’s a bottleneck up at the top of the street by the T-Junction on Brown Street where you have a Bus Eireann stop.

"You also have a very popular chipper there as well, so traffic gets backed up around the corner especially at peak times and its getting out of control at the moment."

Cllr Clune called on Waterford Council to begin the process of designing an integrated traffic plan for the village.

In response, Senior Engineer with Waterford Council Gabriel Hynes said: “I’m not sure if a speed/traffic survey was done but that is something we will do. In relation to a traffic management plan, in the medium term we don’t have an issue with doing that."

He added: "Given the possibility of speed limits changing to 30 km/h in urban centers, that may or may not have an impact.”