“You are stuck in traffic from around 6am to 7.30am”, explained Jean Konsbruck, Mayor of Saeul, in conversation with RTL. He is not sure why, but the phenomenon is often worse at the beginning of the week: “Mondays and Tuesdays are really horrible.” The flow of cars, made up of mainly Belgian cross-border employees, at times reaches a point where the local official “can’t even get out of his garage”.
The equivalent of “25% of the flow from the Arlon motorway” passes through this junction every morning, Konsbruck added. Some three million cars pass through the heart of Saeul, Luxembourg’s smallest municipality, where two national roads meet: the N8 and the N12. The situation has apparently worsened with the opening of the Route du Nord since the N8 leads straight to Mersch, where motorists can directly access the motorway.
Konsbruck, while bearing the upcoming election year in mind, hopes that the Minister for Mobility and Public Works, François Bausch, will help calm the situation by keeping his promise to transform the centre of Saeul into a reduced-speed zone, with the installation of “two speed cameras in the village”.
Negotiations with the Ministry are already well-underway to ensure that the heart of Saeul, where the town hall, school, and church are located, becomes a 30 km/h zone.
Verbal approval has been given and the modification work to reduce the speed of cars, “will start at the beginning of 2023", confirmed Konsbruck. This will also represent an opportunity for the municipality to lay new water pipes and install a new communal central heating system for all public buildings.
The 30 km/h zone is believed to make the route to school safer for local children. Mayor Konsbruck warned however that it will not be a perfect solution: “If everyone respected the 50 km/h limit, there would be no need to create a 30 km/h zone. That’s the biggest problem.”
The politician further expressed frustrations over the existing speed cameras outside of the village: “If I’m a bit distracted, I get a €49 ticket. On the other hand, if I drive through a village at 130 km/h, chances are high that I won’t be punished, because it’s rare to see a police officer at that moment. It’s ridiculous.”
While often plagued with congestion in the morning, cars regularly speed through the village during the rest of the day. “The speed record at the school is 138 km/h in the middle of the day! It’s rather stupid”, lamented the mayor.
The municipality has already installed a vehicle-activated speed indicator on the N8 at the entrance to Saeul, so that motorists are aware of their speed when driving into the village, especially as the school road crosses the dangerous N8. But Konsbruck says “people don’t care as there are no penalties”. He regularly checks records and knows that “on average, more or less 50% of vehicles entering the town do not respect the speed limit”.
In 2021, the Bridges and Roads Administration carried out speed measurements with a mobile radar at two locations in the village and the data corroborates the amount of speeding described by the local official.
“Mr Bausch has given me his verbal agreement to carry out a pilot project”, Konsbruck explained, outlining plans for the installation of a speed camera in the village. According to the mayor’s sources, the first municipality with such an installation will be Walferdange.
The politician emphasised that the idea “is not to punish the citizen. We just want to point out that you are now entering a village. So adapt your speed”.
In the evening, traffic is more evenly distributed between 4pm and 8pm with a peak at 6pm. And after 10pm, “you don’t recognise the village”, concludes Mayor Konsbruk with amusement.
https://5minutes.rtl.lu/actu/luxembourg/a/1990363.htmlRead also: Transporter truck stuck in Saeul for three days
