PEOPLE using public transport to get to work in Limerick, as well as ill and disabled people who need to use the train to get to hospital appointments, are being stopped from driving into a suburban train station by large concrete barriers.
Commuters who turned up to Sixmilebridge Railway Station on Thursday, July 27 were stunned to find they couldn’t park their cars and take the train because the car park was completely blocked off.
Local people were angered that, after two years of complaining about illegal caravan parking in the station, the caravans have been moved on but now the car park is completely blocked from use.
Mike Glynn, a lifetime resident in Sixmilebridge, County Clare, told the Limerick Post that he “can’t believe what they have done. I was down there today and I saw two people struggling to try to get to and from the train.”
“One was an elderly lady on a walking frame. Her husband, a man I know who is not in good health himself, had to park the car outside and she had to try to make her way to the car from the train.
“It took the poor woman forever,” Mr Glynn said.
“I saw another elderly man having terrible trouble having to walk. For more than two years, caravans were taking up as many as twenty car parking spaces here. Now no one can park at all.
“It’s ridiculous. Is this the only solution the Council could come up with?”
Mr Glynn said the station gets plenty of traffic on a daily basis with commuters driving to the station and then taking the train into Limerick or Ennis or connecting on further afield.
“They want us to use public transport, but if you have to drive as far as the station, where are you supposed to leave the car? And what about the poor people who are trying to get the train for hospital appointments? Was this thought out at all?”
In reply to a query on the matter from the Limerick Post, A spokesman for Clare County Council said: “The carpark at Sixmilebridge is currently closed to facilitate construction works allowing for an alteration to the entrance point. The boulders are a safety measure during these works, and the closure is expected to be in place for the next three to four weeks.”
