‘Suck it and see’ on traffic gridlock

At this month’s Planning and Consultation committee meeting, during Translink’s six month update to councillors, local bus manager Gerry Mullan said the transport company was “holding back” on putting on more buses to wait and see what disruption the work causes.

He told councillors: “We won’t know how bad it is, until it happens. It really is a case of suck it and see.

“We have more drivers and four more double decker buses that we could put on right now, but we are holding back. We do not want to throw more buses on if there is going to be gridlock.

“The contractor has promised to keep two lanes of traffic flowing in each direction during the work, but we are not confident that will keep traffic flowing and there will be gridlock and the top road maybe just as bad.

“If we were to put on extra services, they could just end up stacked together.”

Mr Mullan said major works were to kick off on the road on April 5. He added: “Will we be closely looking at it and how the traffic moves and then we will know what we are doing.”