Comment & Analysis: While residents in different parts of Ballina and Mayo might have their own complaints about the lack of crossings, Killala Road is an acute example of a lack of upgrades to keep up with the level of development.
The urban section of the road houses more people and larger workplaces than most smaller Mayo towns. In population terms, if the Killala Road area were its own town, it would have a higher population than Swinford, Foxford, Kiltimagh, Charlestown, Crossmolina, Belmullet, Knock, Balla, Newport, or Killala.
I have lived most of my life along the road, and despite much development, the public area has not changed much since I was in my late teens, around 2000. Now, my own children have to navigate it.
One of the main changes has been painted cycle lanes, which by even standards at the time were of low quality due to their narrow width and are now hopelessly outdated compared to modern standards, especially given the volume and speed of traffic on the road.
Councillors over the years have echoed residents and looked for pedestrian crossings (in locations such as at Costcutters, the Merry Munk and housing estates), and recently, school children, their parents and other residents protested the lack of a footpath to the new school.
The urban section of the road is around 3km long, but only has a single crossing on it.
The reality of the road is that the status quo pushes more people into cars, which goes against climate targets, is against health policy of getting people moving in their daily lives, causes more congestion in the town, and causes more wear and tear damage to the road which the council is unable to maintain to a high standard (before patching on one section is finished, significant deterioration is visible elsewhere).
Over the years, the extra traffic and lack of crossings and paths have made it harder to live on or use the road without a car to get around, which pushes more people into cars, even for short trips.

Linear development approved by Mayo County Council
Linear development, the development of housing and businesses along a road out of an urban area, is widely seen as poor planning when other lands are available closer to the town centre.
The Killala Road has been subject to Mayo County Council approving housing estates and commercial developments in a linear fashion along the Killala Road for decades, but there are no corresponding safety measures such as pedestrian crossings, segregated cycle paths, or other traffic calming measures. One section has no footpath or crossing to a housing estate or a school.
Many side roads and estate entrances along the road have unnecessarily wide entrances, which also affect the main road and are safety issues, especially for people walking and cycling. Some estates have wider entrances than through roads. Many of these side street points don’t have accessibility basics such as dropped kerbs or tactile slabs.
The Coca-Cola factory was announced in 1998 and opened in 2021.
Around the same time and up to the present day, there has been the development of many housing estates, a number of smaller commercial developments, the building of educational facilities (including a new replacement primary school and early years education and after-school facility) and clusters of houses around the road.

Larger than the normal number of trucks
Although I would note that my experience is most HGV drivers are some of the best drivers and give space to people cycling etc, the large number of HGV movements, by its nature, is an extra risk factor for the road, and this is made worse by a road design which is outdated.
The road is home to one of Mayo’s largest ratepayers, Coca-Cola (Ballina Beverages). The opening of the factory and its expansion over time has resulted in a large amount of extra traffic daily — a mix of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), large goods vehicles (LGVs), service vans and the cars of the many employees.
While the road is only a regional road, it attracts HGVs to a level which is normally associated with a national road. This includes two significant public facilities which attract HGVs: the council’s waste facility further down the road and the wastewater plant in Belleek (access for trucks for waste water which needs treatment before discharge, is via the Killala Road).
Besides the Coca-Cola factory, there is also a large number of businesses which have no choice but to use the Killala Road for HGV access, including three oil depots on the road, a large abattoir, quarries, the businesses at the Killala Business Park, and other businesses along and north of the road.
While many of these truck movements are small enough when looked at by which company or facility they are serving, combined, they put extra safety pressure on a road where linear development was allowed.

Chronic speeding and inappropriate speed limits
From data from its own driver feedback speed signs and from collisions, the council has also been well aware of chronic speeding issues in the 50km/h section of the road. The 50km/h should also be expanded to the Mulberry Tree or Coca-Cola.
Previous data shows a large level of speeding and idiots speeding at nearly 100km/h. You might expect the higher speeds were all in the middle of the night, but, last year, I saw one of the speed display signs flash just over 100km/h during the evening rush hour and while the idiot was heading into town.
Most of the speeding, even lower level, is usually pointless as there’s a high chance that another driver will be travelling at lower than the speed limit ahead of them. But — as highlighted many times by the RSA — even around a 10km/h level of speeding can make a collision more likely and make the results of such a collision worse,
In the built-up area between the Belleek Crossroads and just north of Culleens National School, the limit is 80k/h and this is highly inappropriate.
While strange official attempts have been made to deny that this part of the 80km/h zone is a built-up urban area, there are housing estates and significant clusters of houses and businesses on both sides of the road. The 80km/h limit clearly mismatches the level of development.
These developments in the 80km/h zone were given approval just outside the old town council area. The county council rightly or wrongly approved those developments, but what’s clear is that it has neglected its responsibility to redesign the road and lower the speed limit to account for the development.

Lack of crossings
The urban section of the road just has one crossing its 3km length and there is not a single pedestrian crossing in the 2km between Leigue Cemetery and the end linear development just beyond the new school.
The Design Manual For Urban Roads and Streets, which is mandatory for local authorities to follow, outlines that “The location and frequency of crossings should align with key desire lines and be provided at regular intervals.”
There are several clear reasons to justify installing a number of crossings, including housing on both sides, a shop on one side, a pub used by the community on the other, and educational facilities.
Accounting for “desire lines” and the need for crossings to be provided at regular intervals” mentioned in the manual, the road needs at least 5-6 extra crossings.
While the council may claim that the population level does not justly it, as mentioned already the population is larger than many of the smaller towns in the county but all focused along one main road. The council was responsible for the granting of the development along the road and now has a responsibility to the people living and working there now and the planned growth in the area.

No footpath to a housing estate built in 2005 and a school which opened last year
This includes no footpath to both the Oaklawns housing estate (built around 2005) and the new Culleens National School, which has been planned for many years (approval in 2018, Planning File Number: 17345) and constructive started in 2021.
After the council granted the planning, I wrote in an article that included that “The council reply to the school in the planning file seems to indicate that they will be providing a footpath”.
The school opened last year, but the path still hasn’t been built, nor has any type of crossing over to the other side of the road, which has a footpath and more housing (children living on that side now have to run across), and the speed limit has inappropriately remained at 80km/h.
So, the housing estate has been without a footpath or crossing for 20 years, and the council has known about the school being built for around a decade or more.
As well as a much needed new footpath and cycle path on the school side of the road, because development was allowed on both side of the road, the council now has an obligation to provide lower speed limits with a crossing point with a central median, much like the village traffic calming seen across the country.

No meaningful attempts to modernise the road
For my part, in 2021, I also suggested ways to implement safety measures, including a two-way cycle path which would be installed in line with what has been built on busy roads elsewhere in Ireland — see this article and which was repackaged and refined in 2023.
The suggestion of a cycle path is as much of a traffic calming measure as it is provision for cycling. As the authors of a 2019 study on the safety effects of installing cycle paths said: “Protected separated bike facilities was one of our biggest factors associated with lower fatalities and lower injuries for all road users. If you’re going out of your way to make your city safe for a broader range of cyclists … we’re finding that it ends up being a safer city for everyone.”
That can be applied to a town as well as a city, and road safety really should be on the minds of Mayo County Council after recent levels of a high number of road deaths in the county, which is usually associated with a high number of injuries too.
These suggestions for the Killala Road were presented to local senior officials via local politicians, but they were told that the town’s mobility plan would be needed first.
But you don’t need a wider plan to see that action is needed on the Killala Road, and that should include the footpath and crossing at the school, more crossings along the road, and segregated cycling provision. The NTA also accepted the need for the cycle path and outlined the Killala Road as a primary route in the national Cycle Connects plans.
Mayo County Council needs to act within months on the lack of a footpath to the school and start to develop a plan for the wider issues on the road this year. Anything else is compounded neglect.
Absolutely powerful article Cian, That photo alone of the 3 signs should be on the screensaver of every councillor in the MD and every member of the Infrastructure and Active Travel Exec. They should be mortified to be known as the Council responsible for what you have described. So much time has elapsed all the workers, residents and school management must have reached a state of “But sure what can we do?”