Huge number of traffic lights

With 44 traffic lights operational in the city, Lisburn only falls behind Belfast (428) and Londonderry (61), while Newtonabbey has the same amount of lights.

Mr Higginson has said that many of Lisburn’s problems, including the large number of traffic lights, stemmed from the grant of city status to the town.

“When Lisburn became a city, it is quite clear the DRD for one thought they should give us city-sized traffic problems,” he said.

“Traffic lights mushroomed all over the place and almost at once, traffic snarled up. It is not as bad as Belfast but that says very little because Belfast is now officially the most snarled-up traffic city in the UK.

“Lisburn is bad, however, by anybody’s standards. With 44 traffic lights, Lisburn alone has almost 5% of the Northern Ireland total of 1055.

“Why, for example, in Lisburn city centre are there no fewer than six sets of traffic lights between the railway station at the end of Railway Street and McCall’s shop corner?

“Why is there only one lane instead of the previous two taking traffic from Railway Street through the town centre?

“Now with ‘city’ centre traffic reduced to only one lane, you have got to question the common sense of the people involved in planning this.”

“Just a two minute delay to every car journey equates to a loss of approximately £16 billion every year [in the UK]. This is equivalent to 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).