Three years on, road safety concerns persist at Athlone's Coláiste Chiaráin

Monday was a 'Slow Down Day' nationally - but you wouldn't have known it from watching the traffic fly past on the road outside Coláiste Chiaráin in Athlone that morning, according to a concerned parent with two sons in the school.

Corin Bishop said that, despite the still-lifting fog on Monday morning, there were cars regularly passing at 80 to 90km per hour in the 60km zone on the R446 alongside the secondary school.

Corin, a local resident with sons in Transition Year and first year in the school, has been highlighting the need for safety improvements on the R446 near Coláiste Chiaráin and Summerhill NS for the last three years.

Despite engagement with Roscommon County Council, which included a meeting on site with councillors and a local authority engineer, he said little progress had been made since he first highlighted these issues in September 2020.

"There is now a new road surface on the R446, which has resulted in cars driving faster on it," he said.

"There is a speed reminder sign, but it's positioned after the change in road speed, and only in the Ballinasloe to Athlone direction. We also need one in the Athlone to Ballinasloe direction, shortly after the Drum Road turn off and before where the locals and school kids cross."

He said a dedicated crossing point for pedestrians in the vicinity of Coláiste Chiaráin had been promised but had not yet materialised.

"There have been promises of a crossing, and that someone would look at signage, but there has been no action."

He said both of his sons attending Coláiste Chiaráin are walking to school and having to cross a road "where people aren't paying attention, and driving too fast, with blind corners and poor visibility."

A number of low-cost measures could be taken to improve safety on the R446 in the Drum - Summerhill area, he argued, including banning overtaking on a stretch of the road where it's currently permitted, and installing eye-level speed limit signage.

He also said there had been a lack of speed enforcement by Gardai on the R446, despite the presence of the local schools and the fact that there had been accidents there in the past.

"There's a lack of a Garda presence and speed checks on that road, even though you have over 900 secondary school pupils and around 250 national school pupils coming in and out of there at peak times."

Local Fine Gael councillor John Naughten agreed that, while some work had been carried out on the road in recent years, more was needed.

He said a pedestrian crossing had been installed on the Drum Road, and that the county council was awaiting a response from central Government on a request for additional funding to install a crossing, a footpath, and additional lighting on the R446.

"I would share the concerns raised by Corin, and there is a requirement at the Summerhill end of that road for a crossing to be put in place," said Cllr Naughten.

"The council has put in a request for additional funding for it, and hopefully we will see progress made on that before the end of this year."