Athenry Infrastructure Upgrades

KevR

Galway News wrote:

MAYOR OPENS VITAL NEW LINK ROAD IN ATHENRY

November 6, 2009 - 10:12am

Mayor of County Galway, Tom McHugh, has offically opened the Raheen Link Road in Athenry in the past half hour.
The road, which cost 1 point 1 million euro was built by J.J Rhattigan and Sons.
It links the Ballygurraun Road and Turloughmore road via the former IDA Business Park road.
The new road provides a vital link between Athenry Town Centre and railway station.

I'm pretty sure this link road has been open for a few weeks (maybe with some tidying work still to do) and today is just the official opening. I drove on it, that's how I know :P. They had the link road open and diversions in place when they were putting a new road bridge (R348) over the railway line, see below.

The link road does save a nice bit of time. Depending on where you're going in the town it will save you driving through some narrow streets which are barely wide enough for one car. Makes a big difference coming out of the town onto the R348 because you can avoid the one way system that brings you the whole way around the town centre.

The dreadfully narrow R348 hump back bridge on the way into the town has also recently been replaced with a wider less humpy bridge. I'm really glad of this because I always used to meet a bit truck or tractor on the old bridge; quite a hairy experience.

In the past year or so, further out of the town, Irish Rail has replaced their 2 railway bridges which pass over the R348.

One of the link roads from the M6 junction is partially open near the town. As far as I know there will be 2 link roads onto the R348 either side of the town. In addition to the M6, direct trains to Limerick will be coming soon and evetually the M17/18 will pass near the town. Exciting times for Athenry although all the new roads and roundabouts are confusing as fvck if you're not very familiar with the area.

Prior to Link Road:


New Link Road:



R348 Hump-Back Bridge:

L1011

I was in Athenry on Wednesday and due to not being local and my satnav obviously not having an unofficially opened road on it I had to navigate the one-way twice to get to/from New Line. Arse.

Will definitely make certain journeys much easier.

KevR

Forgot to mention that Irish Rail are in the process of installing lifts on both platforms in the train station and a new pedestrian bridge over the tracks.

serfboard

KevR wrote: »

In addition to the M6, direct trains to Limerick will be coming soon and evetually the M17/18 will pass near the town. Exciting times for Athenry

Indeed ... 'twill soon be the best connected town in the county.