New school’s teething issues over parking
An audit is to be carried out by Galway County Council to address safety concerns over parking near the new Presentation Secondary School in Athenry – with a new link road doing little to alleviate that problem.
At a meeting of Athenry Oranmore Municipal District, Cllr Gabe Cronnelly (Ind), said that since the school had reopened earlier this month, cars had been abandoned all over the road in the Raheen Woods area – this despite ample room on the new link road from the M6 to the school, which had opened in advance of the start of term.
“The community warden did go down and received dog’s abuse,” he added.
Senior Engineer, Damien Mitchell, said they would be carrying out a review in the coming months and would carry out the necessary safety measures, once they had ascertained what was required.
“We have committed to a review; we wanted everyone back to school for a couple of week, to let everyone settle down. Once everyone is back, there will a review – an audit and we will put in any measures that are needed.
Cllr Cronnelly said whether it was bollards or some other mechanism of blocking people from parking on the footpaths near the school, “something had to be done”.
“There are people who have poor mobility who actually have to go out on the road to pass parked cars. The habits are starting to appear already.
“The road was designed to be narrow to stop this from happening, and the footpaths are high, but they are able to get up on them,” he explained.
Cllr Shelly Herterich Quinn (FF) said buses parking up and the volume of traffic was creating chaos, and called for some method whereby the parents of children in the school should be educated on the importance of not parking on the narrow artery – as it was discouraging people from walking to school.
Councillors were told that the school had 18 buses travelling to it every morning and evening and was operating its own traffic management plan to make their arrival in the evening run smoothly – preventing cars from entering the premises until after 4.15pm.
Cllr Albert Dolan (FF) suggested that a programme with the Student Council in the school should commence, so that students could work with the school and local representatives to solve the problem.