Trucks parking in middle of carriageway on St Martin’s Road outside Rosslare Europort

With the amount of traffic coming in and out of Rosslare Europort increasing on a daily basis, drivers of Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) are being forced to get creative when it comes to parking. However, their efforts to find amenable waiting areas are posing huge risks to people living in the area according to Councillor Ger Carthy. Speaking at the December meeting of the Rosslare Municipal District (RMD) Cllr Carthy said the council needed to take action before someone was seriously hurt.

“The St Martin’s Road carriageway is three times the width of a normal carriageway, is there a possibility we can install build-outs or temporary bollards, similar to what we installed at Centra in Rosslare Strand, to stop trucks overnight parking along by the residential estates there?” he asked Roads Engineer Mark Collins. “And could we also talk to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) in relation to the main road from Kilrane to the service station, the trucks are parking between the build-outs on the road there, so between both carriageways, they’re using that as a car park space, it’s deadly dangerous, someone is going to be killed. Could we arrange to have temporary bollards or cones put in to stop that parking?”

In response, Mr Collins said Wexford County Council (WCC) had been “looking at designs for modifications to reduce the impact of HGV parking in the area” and that the matter was “being discussed with the National Transport Authority (NTA)”. “It may be a long-term project, I’m not sure what we can do in the short-term,” continued Mr Collins. “I should have some resolution in the New Year, a section of that road is part of an active travel scheme which is currently in design so they may all go hand in hand.”

However, Cllr Carthy expressed the urgency of the situation and asked that it be dealt with this side of 2022. “We can’t wait for the TII or the NRA, the temporary bollards have to be installed in the next week, this is going on daily and someone is going to get killed,” he said.

“I’ll follow that up,” replied Mr Collins.