Road Safety on the R104 St. Margaret’s Road

Since last summer, I have been raising the issue of excessive speeding on the R104 St. Margaret’s road between Charlestown shopping centre and IKEA, with the traffic division of Fingal County Council and An Garda Síochána.

I had raised the points with them about incidents of excessive speeding on the road as well as a number of collisions in the vicinity of Hampton Wood and Jamestown road. Over the Christmas period there were two serious road incidents on this road and these again highlighted concerns about road safety and the need for an assessment of traffic control measures on the road. 

Following my requests, Fingal County Council recently carried out a speed survey over a 3 day period to determine the speeds on the road.

The results of the survey have now been assessed and the survey found that given the nature of the road and the traffic using it, the current 50kph speed limit is appropriate. The report stated that while some individual speeds noticeably in excess of the speed limit were recorded, these occurred almost exclusively during the early morning hours.

An assessment of the appropriate responses was carried out by Fingal County Council and the following have been recommended:

·        additional speed limit signs should be posted west bound on the approach to Hampton Wood from the IKEA direction to further reinforce the 50kph limit.
·        that An Garda Síochána allocate enforcement resources to this section of the R104 for a period of time to enforce the speed limit.
·        that traffic lights be installed at the junction of the R104 and Jamestown Road (including the entrance to Creston Estate) as a traffic control measure.

The option of installing speed ramps has been ruled out as the report stated that it is not the general policy to install ramps on this type of road (due to the effects it would have on all traffic including Buses, HGVs and Emergency Services) except where there was strong evidence of a significant traffic hazard. The report said that ramps on a road such as this would create a significant amount of noise from large vehicles and so would be a serious nuisance during night hours.

Fingal Co Co have stated that they will make arrangements in the coming weeks to put the additional speed limit signs in place. Fingal are also to make a request to the National Transport Authority for funding for putting in traffic lights at the junction of the R104 and Jamestown road as they currently do not have the required funding. I will be following up this matter with the National Transport Authority to seek to have these works completed as quickly as possible.

Fingal have also said they will raise the issue of the enforcement of speed limits on the road with the Traffic Division of An Garda Síochána at their next meeting. In the report it states that a significant number of motorists will only reduce speeds if they believe that the risk of being prosecuted is likely and the evidence suggests that targeting specific roads at specific times for enforcement has proved successful. I will be raising this matter with the Gardaí when I next meet with them to ensure attention is paid to the area to clamp down on dangerous driving.

I will continue to work with Finglas County Council and An Garda Síochána to implement these measures and I will notify residents of any further developments on these issues.

If you would like to contact me about this matter, please feel free to get in touch on  618 3280 or john.lyons@oir.ie