Crunch meeting to discuss one-way future

Councillors are this week buckling under pressure from frustrated locals angered at the delays and congestion caused by the new one-way system, with urgent meetings being organised with the council executive in a bid to address the problem. Town and county councillors have slammed the new one-way system through the centre of the town amid growing pressure from business people and locals using the system. Some councillors now claim the one-way system is premature without the Railway Field Road and are calling on the executive to address the situation immediately. Mayor of Athlone Cllr Egbert Moran has said people may need longer than a week to get used to the new system, but admitted there were glitches that needed to be ironed out and he called on the council to address these. He said the engineers and consultants needed to find the best route for the system. 'The one-way system was planned with Railway Field Road in mind. But that road"s not there. This plan is a couple of years old,' he told the Westmeath Independent. His party colleague Kevin "Boxer" Moran had said the one-way system was not working and criticised CIE for not repsonding to a proposal made by the council for a four-lane link road through the Railway Field in Athlone. When it was first planned five years ago, this (one-way) system was designed to work with the Railway Field Road. CIE is now holding the town to ransom over this road,' he said. 'With the level of concern that"s out there, I think we do have to sit around the table with our engineers and say that we"ll either go with this or we"ll scrap it until the Railway Field Road comes on stream. The problems we had over the last week can"t be allowed to continue, particularly with children returning to school in two weeks" time,' he said. The politicians are acting in response to numerous representations made to them from locals using the town centre, business people and taxi drivers, who are all frustrated at the traffic chaos that has emerged since the one-way system came into operation last Wednesday. Gardai have also received a number of complaints in relation to the traffic chaos and a meeting will be held today (Wednesday) or tomorrow between Athlone Area Director of Services Barry Kehoe and consultants to discuss the future of the system.