STRAFFAN: 14 April 2001: by Trish Whelan & Brian Byrne. Heavy Goods Vehicles are wrecking the road from Barberstown to Kill and causing serious difficulty for the village of Straffan, according to Emmet Stagg TD, Labour’s spokesperson on Transport, Energy & Roads.
Deputy Stagg, who lives in the area, says much of the problem is from trucks avoiding the tolls on the M50 by travelling to and from northern counties via Dunboyne and Maynooth.
And he has suggested a temporary ban from the affected areas of non-local HGVs, as well as a major upgrading of the Barberstown-Kill road by Kildare County Council and the Department of the Environment.
The road will be the main access route for the Ryder Cup to be hosted in the K Club in 2005, and Deputy Stagg says a two-way carriageway with hard shoulders is needed, along with a by-pass of Straffan village and re-alignments of bridges over the Liffey and the Grand Canal.
In the meantime, the road is already ‘pummelled to pieces’ by the heavy traffic, he says, and a 40mph speed limit should be implemented until improvements are made.
“There have been a large number of accidents on the route,” he says. “On one morning last week, I counted no less than seven vehicles in the ditch. Even a bus went off the road recently.”
Kildare county engineer Jimmy Lynch says he’s opposed to imposing a 40mph speed limit because inability to police it would ‘bring other speed limits into disrepute’. Deputy Stagg counters this with his claim that the road is ‘not capable’ of taking traffic at more than that speed.
The upcoming hosting of the Ryder Cup has already resulted in a consultants’ investigation of the road infrastructure around the K Club, but Deputy Stagg says improvements should not be ‘tied into’ this process. “There is already a very high level of traffic on the road, and it’s just not safe,” he says. “As it is, meeting traffic has to stop to allow one vehicle pass another.”
He also points out that the stretch of road from Barberstown to Straffan was traditionally a road for local people to walk on, but this is no longer possible. “The whole thing is a disgrace,” he says. “Local people are looking for footpaths and lights, but with money flying around the place, there are not even any proposals from the council to do something about the situation.”
Maynooth-based Fine Gael councillor Senan Griffin says he’s in ‘100 percent agreement’ with Deputy Stagg about the problem, though he’s fearful of what might happen to the villages of Clane (below) and Sallins if a ban on HGVs was introduced to the Straffan road.
“It might be a bit drastic,” he says. “Maybe we should see what other measures could be put in place first.”
©2001brianbyrnetrishwhelan/knn
