Local residents in plea to solve road chaos in Dunboyne

Dunboyne residents are demanding action over broken roads, bad signage and dangerous speed limits they believe need fixing before a serious accident occurs. Long-running problems sees everything from speeding luxury cars on narrow and breaking roads haring around the outskirts to 18-wheelers blocking up the main street in the village and residents have finally had enough. A spokesperson for local residents said that what used to be safe walking areas in the town are now "unsafe for groups, especially children, who have to stand in as trucks and cars go through the area unsure of speed limits because they are badly signposted and could change in the blink of an eye". Nearby Thornton's Recycling Centre is forced to run its trucks through the town from its plant on the industrial estate, despite being just metres from the R157 which would take their trucks out of the town and onto the M3. The spokesperson said the old Navan road at Bennetstown has seen lorries, trucks -and even Presidential candidates - get stuck in a residential cul-de-sac. "The old Navan Road is now completely blocked off but, up until a few months ago, the sign was still up for Dunshaughlin, which they would use as a marker to go through for Navan if they didn't know the area. "There's a few residential houses there and one recent Easter there were, and I counted, 23 cars down this very small residential cul-de-sac all trying to turn around - it was chaos. Recently, there have been walls and driveway gates knocked in with larger vehicles trying to turn down there and it's causing a problem for the residents," he said. "Even though the sign is gone, saying Dunshaughlin, Mary Davis's Presidential campaign bus got stuck down there. "The village also has a lot of heavy-duty traffic going through it and, recently, an 18-wheeler took out the telephone cables, meaning we had difficulty ringing, for example, the local gardaí! Something has got to be done before there is a serious accident. I know of one man who moved out and said that one of the reasons was that he was afraid anything would happen to his children on the road," the spokesperson said. Local county councillor Maria Murphy said the Department of Transport has been made aware of the concerns for speed limits around the county and will soon return with a review. "I don't know why people are still going up the Bennetstown cul-de-sac because there are signs that got put up there, but another problem is people avoiding tolls on the M3." "I'll be lobbying for some exits off the Trim Road to go down to 60km/h when it (the review) comes back because it is a concern, but because it has to go through a public process, it could well be 12 months before it's changed," she added.