Cash-strapped Councils have no answers as freeze exposes sad state of our roads

Nothing seems to focus the minds as much as the state of the roads. Over the past couple of months, it occupied mountains of television coverage both here and across Britain. We witnessed reporters in the most precarious of situations as they brought to us the woes of motorists who were either taking their lives in their hands or abandoning their vehicles.

There was days when Sky News were provided with round the clock material when certain parts of England were submerged in snow and invariably the focus of attention turned to the roads where drivers were trying, unsuccessfully in many cases, to handle the roads which were in a treacherous condition.

Even we became obsessed with the weather forecasts since the flooding of mid November to the Christmas freeze and it was mainly to learn how the roads would be for travelling to work or dropping the kids to school the following day. So much so that the likes of John Eagleton and Jean Byrne could be adopted as family members.

Throughout County Galway, motorists have gone from negotiating flooded roads to ensuring that there is enough grip on their tyres to travel on some of the most treacherous roads experienced in quite a number of years. And now they have come face to face with a whole new crisis – which is directly related to the two previous climatic experiences.

Any one traversing the roads of County Galway – and I mean from Ballymoe across to Clifden – will have come face to face with the impact the floods and the freezing had on our roads as some of them have been torn to shreds. There is hardly a mile of road which doesn’t have a pothole or the sides of it frittered away.

Over the weekend whether it was at mass, at a funeral or in the local hostelry, the topic on everybody’s lips was the deplorable condition of the roads . . . there were some people worried that they wouldn’t have anything to talk about once the big freeze came to an end but they were wrong. Very wrong.

There are stretches of road throughout the county where motorists have to travel at snail’s place because otherwise they risk doing serious damage to their cars. This is the extent in which the road surfaces have broken up since the thaw began and it will take a considerable amount of money to restore them.

There is no parish in the county which does not have its own tale of woe – in some cases the depth of the potholes are such that the clay underneath is visible – with regard to the conditions of the road and many local people are understandably waiting for the lorries full of tar and chips to wind their way in their direction and carry out a major resurfacing job.

Unfortunately it not as simple as that as, no doubt, every local councillor is trying to explain to their constituents with great regularity over the past week or so. And it is not something that Galway County Council can immediately rectify either. In fact it could be several months before the crumbling roads issue can be addressed in a meaningful manner.

The bare facts are that Galway County Council is strapped for cash for this type of emergency. Their roads and transportation budget for 2010 was slashed by almost €13 million on the previous year which was €10 million down on the year before that. Even at the current level of funding, minor roads in the county were going to suffer.

But now the county is faced with a new challenge as even the major roads – the N17, the Galway to Roscommon road, the Galway to Clifden road and the Headford road out of the city – are dangerously potholed. So dangerous in fact that County Council staff have erected bollards around some of them to stop motorists crashing into them.

For more, read page 12 of this week's Connacht Tribune