NAAS: 11 April 2001: by Brian Byrne. They played a numbers game for two hours at Naas UDC last night. But nobody won anything. Certainly not the residents of Lakelands, who were trying to get car numbers out of their estate.
Parking space numbers was what it was all about at last night’s meeting. As it has been for 12 months in Lakelands since the construction work at the hospital made the estate an overflow car park for staff, construction workers, and hospital visitors. Not to mention Craddockstown Road becoming a two-lane parking bay with a single traffic lane.
And after a night of numbers juggling that would have earned the respect of Einstein, the answers still came up the same: too many motorists parking without consideration, too few using facilities provided elsewhere.
“It’s not our fault,” said the UDC, the gardai, the hospital management and the health board’s hospital project manager.
Naas town clerk Declan Kirrane said the UDC had given up ticketing cars on the Craddockstown Road footpaths because they were all appealed by people claiming they were urgently rushing into the hospital with broken heads and other ailments. “It was just clogging up our system,” he said.
The gardai weren’t keen on trying to deal with illegal parking in the area either, for similar reasons. And as far as those who park in Lakelands itself, they have no powers unless there are relevant by-laws. Which there aren’t.
The hospital management representative has tried to get his staff to park in the Ballycane Church car park, with its free shuttle bus, but to no avail.
The project manager has also tried to get contractors and their workers to use the same facility, with not much success. “I can’t dictate to them where they park,” he said. “I can only recommend and appeal.”
The council had come up with a proposal in advance of last night’s special meeting. Effectively throwing in the towel on its responsibility for illegal parking control.
If people insist on parking on the footpath, let’s regularise the situation and take away the footpath, the UDC suggested. Turn it into parking spaces - on a temporary basis, of course. And put another temporary footpath inside the grass area.
But they’re already driving across the grass to park in front of our houses, cried Lakelands. Can’t we have a wall as well?
Damp squib. Needless expense, apparently, for something that’s only required for another three and a half years or so.
Chairman Pat O’Reilly told Lakelands that it was up to themselves to come up with a proposal if they didn’t like what the council suggested.
And, wearing his traffic expert hat, he dismissed their request that double yellow lines be put at the entrance to and along the distributor road of the estate. “That will only push the problem further into the estate,” he ordained.
The project manager and the hospital rep came in for heavy stick from some councillors, notably Timmy Conway and Willie Callaghan.
“I think the health board should pay for any work we have to do ... they’ve failed miserably to deal with the situation,” Cllr Callaghan said.
“They just throw their hands in the air and tell us ‘that’s it’,” Cllr Conway almost thundered.
Cllr Mary Glennon reported on her regular morning school run up the Craddockstown Road when she sees people getting out of their cars and putting their ‘yellow hats’ on.
Lakelands defended the hospital and project managements, pointing out that neither organisation was getting any support from the council by way of enforcement.
Maybe they hadn’t heard the bit about the ‘system’ being ‘clogged up’?
The chairman took a strong line against the hospital people too, bluntly saying it was ‘up to them’ to fulfill their planning conditions in relation to parking.
But haven’t they done so? By arranging an alternative car park at Ballycane and making available extra parking space on Kildare County Council land for staff. And the free shuttle. Is it their fault that practically nobody uses it?
Cllr Seamie Moore wasn’t impressed with the night of numbers. After all the discussion, he suggested that they should get a ‘professional’ analysis of the requirements and the space availabilities and then produce a plan.
Hmm ... presumably the planners who put in the original parking provision conditions are ‘professionals’? And also the hospital and project managers? Besides, as both the Lakelands people and the UDC itself have undertaken their own car parking counts on a number of occasions, is there really a need to bring in consultants to simply tally?
“We could set up a sub-committee,” Cllr Conway suggested. Which could maybe do its own tots and confirm the proposed consultants’ work?
When you add it all up without the politicking or the pontificating, what it boils down to is safety.
And the most telling point was made by Declan Kirrane when he mentioned that a wheelchair-bound county council employee has to push himself down along Craddockstown Road every day because he can’t use the footpath. “We’re not going to allow that to happen for much longer,” he said.
It put the whole thing into perspective in a way which no contribution from anybody else had done the whole night.
Footpaths are for people. If parking regulations were enforced so that people could use the Craddockstown Road footpath, Ballycane’s empty car park would be full every day.
And finally the numbers might add up properly. At least on the Craddockstown Road.
Unfortunately for Lakelands, where services such as oil deliveries often have to come back two or three times before succeeding in their deliveries to the worst-affected areas, they had to go away last night with no feeling that anybody in authority really had a way to help them.
©2001brianbyrne/knn