Despite repeated collisions outside Gosford Forest Park’s main entrance in Markethill the road does not warrant any engineering measures, according to the Roads Minister.
The Department for Infrastructure has undertaken a review of the injury collision history at the road junctions in Markethill and access to the park and determined that no further action is required.
This comes less than three weeks after one man was taken to hospital following a collision at the entrance, prompting DUP MLA, William Irwin, to push the department to undertake a safety review of the A28 road junctions at Markethill and Gosford Forest Park.
Minister John O’Dowd said his department had undertaken a review of the injury collision history and two junctions met the threshold to be investigated further.
However, further investigations confirmed that none of the injury collisions had a causation that would be mitigated by engineering measures.
He said: “My department will continue to monitor the junctions and if there are any significant changes then a further review will be undertaken using the latest PSNI injury collision data.”
Commenting on the response to his official Question to the DFI Minister, William Irwin MLA, said: “People will find this response concerning simply due to the fact that there has been a series of collisions in recent times along this route and indeed one no later than a couple of weeks ago at the entrance to Gosford Forest Park.
“This is a busy road and in the vicinity of Markethill there are five main junctions and I know from speaking to local people and road users, it is difficult to get out of the junctions due to both the volume of traffic and the speed of traffic.
“I have on a number of occasions proposed a lower speed limit to serve the location stretching from the Mullaghbrack Road junction to the Tandragee Road junction, however both the Minister and officials have resisted this idea, I feel it would be a sensible first step to slow traffic down and with that increase awareness of traffic exiting on to and emerging from the various junctions. I will continue this lobby as road safety is so important.”
