50 trucks an hour using bridge

At least 50 truck movements an hour are travelling over a one lane bridge linking O’Briensbridge and Montpelier from a nearby quarry, a local community group has claimed.

In a letter to the Clare planning department, O’Briensbridge Community Group chairman, Mick Murtagh has said there has been a substantial increase in heavy goods vehicle traffic leaving and returning to the Roadstone Plant at Ballyquin Bridgetown.
During the course of a recent meeting with a manager from Roadstone, Mr Murtagh recalled he was informed that 360,000 tonnes of material was required from the company for a site at the University of Limerick.
To shift this amount of material, outside haulers had to be hired to back up the company’s own fleet of contract trucks. According to Mr Murtagh, the manager then stated that ten artic and rigid heavy goods vehicles were required resulting in about 40 truck movements.
“I have now reliably learned that this amount of trucks have been increased to 25. The timescale from Bridgetown to the university is 20 minutes and if you allow for loading and off loading this means that there is at least 50 truck movement an hour going through the villages of O’Briensbridge and Montpelier from the one source, which is Roadstone. I have now also been reliably informed that the requirement is that 6,000 tonnes a day be delivered to the university.
“In addition to Roadstone truck movements, the bridge also has heavy goods vehicles from O’Connell Concrete and McGrath’s of Callaghan’s Mills.
“I made what I considered a very reasonable request that consideration should be given to re-route the trucks via the two-lane Abbey Crossing, which connects to the N7on the Dublin Rd side of Limerick City with the university just out the road.
“The manager refused saying that the traffic lights at St Patrick’s School would cause delays. I then asked him would he operate a one-way system, which was an arrangement that we had with Roadstone in the past and he again refused,” Mr Murtagh claimed.
Mr Murtagh called on Clare County Council to investigate the time that trucks are coming through the villages and whether or not trucks are being fully covered.
“This is an intolerable situation and is a terrible intrusion into peoples lives and into their homes as they are awaken at the earliest of hours by the tremors caused by these heavy laden artic heavy goods vehicles. Homes and parked cars are covered in grit, sand and grime.
“A council official said recently these quarries are there a long time, well our villages have been here a lot longer The bridge linking both villages is fifteen century and the streetscape in O’Briensbridge is eighteen century both of which are protected structures,” he added.
Roadstone declined to respond to a number of queries by The Clare Champion. Clare County Council had not responded at the time of going to press.