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Traffic on Rice Bridge 

Tolling takes its toll

Interesting traffic figures were revealed on Thursday August 9th at the Oral Hearing into the proposed Waterford Bypass. Under cross examination, Mr. John Murphy representing the developer's consultants stated that traffic projections carried out by them with the aid of a computer model predict that in the year 2005, the volume of traffic on Rice bridge will be 40,000 vehicles per day.  But the traffic in the year 2000 on Rice bridge was 33,500. So despite providing a bypass and new bridge, the volume of traffic on Rice bridge in 2005 will have increased by almost 20%. And the new bridge which could carry 42,000 vehicles per day will carry only 14,000 vehicles per day in the same year.  

The reason for this is the tolling of the new bridge. It is estimated that a car will be charged £1 each time it crosses the bridge in either direction and trucks will be charged £3.50.  

The implication of this is that the congestion presently choking the life out of Waterford City is set to continue indefinitely thanks to tolling and the Public Private Partnership.

No doubt this fact will prove interesting to Waterford Corporation who, in addition to being the lead developer for the proposed bypass, are carrying out the Planning, Land Use and Transportation study (PLUTS) with a view to achieving a reduction in the traffic in the city.

 

Thursday August 9th 2001

Campaign for Sensible Transport (CaST)