If you drive regularly through Enniskillen, you will have been frustrated by those “eejits” caught sitting in the yellow box at traffic lights.
Annoying, isn’t it, when your lights go green and you can go, except their car in the box is blocking your way.
Er, I have a confession to make.
I’ve been one of those eejits!
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you think your exit is clear, you drive into the yellow box and suddenly there’s another car in front blocking you and the lights change.
And there you are, stuck and at the mercy of some driver glaring at you because you’re blocking his path.
It’s happened to me, for example, at the major junction outside SW College coming in from Topping’s side, heading into Belmore Street and the traffic flow stops.
Oops!
I say traffic flow, but as we approach the busy December period, “flow” is a bit of a misnomer.
To be fair, when you consider the thousands of vehicles that come in and out and through Enniskillen every day, and the fact that the infrastructure is limited because it is an island, the delays are managed reasonably well.

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But it’s still a major issue for the town, and apart from the economic argument for our region, the bottlenecks cause awful frustrations for us motorists. I wish I had a quid for every minute I’ve sat in a jam in Enniskillen.
It’s not getting any better, and I’m sure you have your own frustrations, with commercial traffic and school pupils criss-crossing the packed town’s roads.
I come in from the Killyhevlin side several times a day; I often queue at the road outside the training centre to get on to the main road, where there’s another queue into town, sometimes it snakes away back well beyond the Killyhevlin Hotel. Often you rely on the goodwill of a driver on the main road to let you out.
Sometimes, as you approach the Celtic Park/ Model School area, you see one lane full and the other one almost empty, and I wonder if better traffic management would see better use of the two lanes.
Others tell me of frustrations on other routes coming into town.
Then there’s the Tesco car park glut at peak periods, another queue to get into a queue and by the time you get to the lights coming out of Tesco, it can take several changes of lights before you join…. another queue heading out to the lights opposite the Real Life bookshop. And if you’ve gone to Asda or Erneside, just take your pick as to which route is quicker out of it.
I’ve never really understood why they didn’t create a junction on the main road into Tesco, directly from the Tempo Road. I suspect money was at the heart of it, and not traffic management issues.
It will be interesting to see what difference the new lanes will make; the one they’re working at on the link opposite Belmore Court which will continue round the corner in front of the Model.
Personally, I admit being sceptical about the difference an extra lane would make coming in the Sligo Road. But it did. Although, having said that, I’m waiting for a crash some of these days as we drive out the “new bridge” and head for Portora direction, with lights green and several cars taking their chances to keep coming through red lights from Henry Street into town.
And try getting out of the back of the Impartial car park on to the busy Queen Elizabeth Road when it’s busy, and nobody feels like letting you out.
What’s your pet bugbear about bottlenecks around Enniskillen?
I can’t be the only one sitting behind the wheel giving out, talking to myself, and watching another driver wave his arms at me in exasperation!

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In November, I had the misfortune to be stuck in traffic in Belfast and Dublin on successive Friday nights. Arriving in Belfast on a wet and miserable Friday tea time, the build-up was horrendous, all because one vehicle had broken down on the Westlink.
And the following Friday, we were in Dublin and booked a taxi from our hotel to go to a restaurant; only to be caught up in seriously bad jams. Imagine watching the taxi meter clicking on another Euro, all while we sat at traffic lights. There are, I suppose, major works going on in Dublin while new tram lines are being laid, a project which will take well into next year. They dug the tram lines up years ago to put in roads, now they’re digging up the roads to put the lines back in again, the disgruntled Dub taxi driver told us.
So, I suppose Enniskillen could be worse.
But it’s still bad enough.
I noticed recently, someone suggested that it would help to build more roads in Northern Ireland if we had tolls. When I drove to Dublin, there were two tolls on the N3 at 1.40 Euro a go; that was a total of 5.60 there and back, and when I consider how much quicker the journey takes nowadays, I thought it was well worth it.
If it meant putting a good dual carriageway from Enniskillen to Ballygawley roundabout and I had to pay a few quid to shorten the journey from here to Belfast, would I be prepared to pay?
Definitely.
Would I be prepared to pay that amount every day around Enniskillen?
 No.
We need a by-pass, and it’s time they got a move on.
I remember in 2006, a direct rule minister putting the southern by-pass on the planning agenda. I wrote a front page headline: “Yes, Minister we do need this by-pass.”
That was after years of lobbying, and it was 10 years ago. We were even warned that it could be 2015 before it was completed.
Now we’re nearing the end of 2016.
In his recent Autumn statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed the NI Executive was to get another £250million for infrastructure. But that’s over four years, and already the noise is that half of it will be allocated to Belfast’s York Street interchange project. Which I agree should get priority.
And we’re already hearing about other pet projects, such as the A5.
And still we sit.
Granted, the Cherrymount link was built, and that helps for some traffic to avoid the town. But generally Fermanagh’s roads don’t get the priority funding they deserve throughout the county.
Hopefully, our representatives can make their voices heard, especially as we are supposed to have local people making local decisions.
The economy and the public needs this by-pass.