Councillors in the Claremorris-Swinford Municipal District have asked that action be taken by the council on a bridge on the Claremorris to Kiltimagh road that crosses an old railway line at Drumeen.
Councillors have called for safety works to be carried out at the location due to numerous accidents having occurred at the location, where there are a number of bad bends, before motorists arrive at the bridge.
Fine Gael councillor Tom Connolly told the meeting he remembered an incident where a person went over the bridge and ended up on the railway line for a number of hours. Independent councillor Richard Finn told the meeting that on one occasion, a relative of his was driving to work one morning when they saw a hand coming up from inside the bridge and when they went to investigate it, they found a woman climbing back over the fence after her car had gone off the road at the bridge.
There was widespread support from councillors for at least traffic-calming measures to be put in place, if there wasn't a possibility of a new bridge being built.
Engineer for Mayo County Council, Conrad Harley, told the meeting that the council had met with Irish Rail on the site, but with it being a disused railway line, funding for a new bridge could be difficult to access. He went on to say that the council would investigate if crash barriers or other solutions would be suitable for the location.
