New 'intelligent' traffic lights for Tipperary town - we ask how intelligent?

                Tipperary County Council is currently engaged in replacing the traffic lights at Crosses Corner in Tipperary town.

 The new traffic lights will be intelligent and remotely monitored to improve safety and traffic flow at the junction. 

However, the works have raised concerns from Tipperary citizens including: the removal of one of the north bound lanes approaching the traffic lights from Bridge Street, the worry about congestion at School times and why the project is taking so long to complete? 

I spoke with Cashel Tipperary Municipal District Engineer, Aidan Finn who answered all the questions.

 What exactly is the works taking place at the traffic lights and for what purpose?

“Traffic is a huge issue in Tipperary town and the volume of traffic has increased beyond the 2007/2008 pre-recession.  

Without a doubt the only way to truly relieve the heavy congestion of traffic through Tipperary Town is by building a by-pass, but in the interim, we must try to ease the traffic and keep pedestrian’s safe. 

 The 20-year old traffic lights in Tipperary town needing replacing and these works have proven to be very complicated due to a number of factors. 

These include: the very large traffic volumes, the necessity to maintain the existing traffic lights in operation while carrying out works, maintaining pedestrian access to businesses and avoiding existing services.”

There is a public concern that because one of the two North bound lanes on Bridge Street has been removed, that the traffic going up Bridge Street will become more congested particularly at School times?

“The phasing of the traffic lights will be prioritised to Bridge Street during school times. 

The new traffic lights will be intelligent and remotely monitored to improve safety and traffic flow at the junction. 

A particular improvement will be the ability to change the phasing of the lights to prioritise cross-town traffic at school times, i.e. prioritise Bridge Street and Davis Street rather than Main Street to clear these roads. 

Our intention with the new traffic light system is that the traffic will move quicker during school times and with proper pedestrian phases it will also be vastly much safer for pedestrians. 

Our intention is also that all non-main street traffic will be encouraged to turn right at the Link Road (Abbey Street) heading towards the N24 en route to Cashel and Clonmel in advance of the traffic-light junction. New sign posts at the Link Road will encourage this.”

Since the pavement has been widened outside the Gorta charity shop at the traffic lights, I observed that large trucks going up Bridge Street and heading straight on towards the post office are still going up on the pavement. This is because the line-of-sight going straight on is now like a chicane due to the widening of the footpath.

“When designing the new layout of the junction the consultants identified a danger to pedestrians on the South West Corner of the junction from large vehicles turning left. 

This has necessitated the removal of one of the two north bound lanes on Bridge Street. 

For this reason the footpath in this area has been widened. When the works are complete, the new road-markings will be installed and this should eradicate the problem of trucks going up on the footpath to turn left or go straight on.

 The work at the site is still in progress and therefore temporarily managed with no road markings for traffic to follow. I will keep a close eye on the situation.”

 Citizens have asked why is the project taking so long and why has the same bit of pavement been taken up and put back a number of times?

“First of all the project is extremely complicated. It’s very frustrating even for us because we’re dealing with a lot of complications. Tipperary is a very complicated town and when on top of that you put a very complicated job it makes things very difficult.

When the work began, the first dig was to place the initial ducts… that turned into an exploration of the many different electrical cables and services lying underneath the ground. 

 include: pubic lighting, ESB, sewers, water mains, existing ducting and old style cables everywhere. It’s all a bit of a mess and we have to look at introducing new pots (chambers) and big boxes holding a lot of equipment for new traffic lights. 

All the old stuff has to stay where it is until the new equipment is put in place.

The project has stopped and started because Tipperary County Council is doing the job themselves for two reasons. 1. If we used an outside contractor we would be left wide open to claims and 2. The job would have been very expensive.

The works started just before Christmas with a bit of ducting but then the weather turned against us. Then we did the kerbing and since then we have been trying to fit all the new bits of pieces in place whilst working on all the other projects and responsibilities in and around the town.

In the middle of this complicated job, we have maintained pedestrian access to all Businesses and hope to continue to do so. 

The job gained momentum in June with two of the four corners completed. The next phase is the new lighting, completing the other two corners and then switching from the old traffic-light system to the new one. This the reason the works are taking a long time and will take approximately another 8-weeks to complete. These new traffic lights will work for another 20 years.”

 Are there any plans to re-visit Kickham Plaza one-way system and turn it back into a two way system?

“No. There is no plan to do this, as we can’t see any advantage in reverting it back to a two-way street.”