By Sabrina Sweeney
Over the past few weeks, my social media feed has become a running commentary on traffic in Letterkenny.
From bus companies warning of delays, to businesses complaining that customers are staying away, the images of queues seem to appear almost daily.
I have to admit it has changed my own behaviour. Unless I really need to go to Letterkenny, I am increasingly inclined not to.
Between the rising cost of fuel and the thought of sitting in traffic for half an hour to travel a few kilometres, it’s enough to make me reconsider.
In some ways I’m lucky. I don’t have to be in Letterkenny regularly, but plenty of people have no choice.
That frustration was reflected at Tuesday’s meeting of the Letterkenny-Milford Municipal District, where traffic unsurprisingly dominated discussion. Councillors raised concerns about school journeys and Christmas congestion before passing a motion from Cllr Ciaran Brogan calling for planned Active Travel works at Ballyraine and Circular Road to be suspended.
The issue will now go before senior council management on Friday and, at this point, that seems entirely reasonable.
A statement from Evolve Menswear this week got to the heart of what people have been saying for months. It described children spending more than an hour on school buses, parents struggling to get from work to school and on to activities, workers arriving late and customers deciding that coming into Letterkenny is no longer worth the hassle.
It was a brave intervention because it went beyond trade and captured the lived frustration of families and working people across the town.
Evolve have called for works to be stopped and some changes reversed. Whether all of that is practical is another matter, but the anger behind it is understandable.
Much of that anger is being directed at the Active Travel projects and there is a legitimate question about priorities. Letterkenny would benefit from safer walking and cycling routes, but where road space is limited, bus priority should have come first.
A reliable bus service has the potential to get far more people out of cars, including schoolchildren, people who cannot cycle and those travelling into Letterkenny from outside the town.
Bus lanes are hardly a new suggestion either. They were identified as a need during consultation on Letterkenny’s development as far back as 2018 and councillors were again calling for dedicated bus lanes last year.
Yet cycle infrastructure is being built while meaningful bus priority is much harder to find.
Even consultation on the proposed town bus service raised the obvious question of how buses could remain punctual while sitting in Letterkenny traffic. The response included building extra recovery time into timetables to absorb delays, which hardly seems the best starting point for persuading people to leave their cars at home.
News this week that not one person had availed of an e-bike service also stands out. People are unlikely to take up cycling in meaningful numbers without safe routes, so there is a case for creating that infrastructure. But doing so ahead of bus priority, and in a way that is contributing to the level of congestion Letterkenny is currently experiencing, is difficult to describe as good transport planning.
A €9 million allocation towards the proposed Letterkenny Transport Hub announced this week is significant and welcome. The hub should eventually improve public transport connections, while the Northern Network, or Windyhall Road, should relieve pressure when completed. However, neither solves what people are dealing with now.
That’s why suggestions raised on Tuesday around Christmas traffic and school journeys deserve consideration. They may sound modest beside multimillion-euro projects, but they could make a practical difference.
The council also needs to look again at the combined effect of all the work taking place and planned. Continuing with every project because funding has been secured or plans approved makes little sense if circumstances on the ground show that something isn’t working.
Much of Letterkenny’s long-term transport plan has merit. But plans for the town’s future also have to work for the people using it now.
It took courage for Evolve to say publicly what many have been saying for months. It’s now time for decision-makers to be brave.
If priorities are wrong, they should be prepared to change them.