Kildare County Council candidates asked to sign up to cycling infrastructure pledge

Seven candidates for the local elections this coming Friday have so far signed up to a pledge, organised by cycling advocates, to support high quality cycling facilitate throughout the county.

Independents Padraig McEvoy and Sorcha O'Neill, Fine Gael’s Philip Slattery and Tim Durkan, the Green Party’s Peter Hamilton and Eoin Hallissey and Bill Clear of the Social Democrats have signed up the pledge.

Over the past week, Maynooth Cycling Campaign emailed all candidates about the pledge. The pledge, in particular, specifies the quality and type of infrastructure favoured by the Cyclingforall.ie campaign which calls for, namly proper segregation from motorised traffic.

Cyclingforall.ie is also campaigning for 20% of the transport budget to be diverted to cycling infrastructure.

Focusing a little more locally to Maynooth, Tim Durkan and Peter Hamilton have also committed to high quality on the Celbridge Road rather than what Maynooth Cycling Campaign describes as “the low quality proposed by Kildare County Council”.

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The campaign has identified that road as a “glaring omission” in the council’s proposals for Maynooth which they call “the failure to provide for cycling facilities to the two primary schools on the Celbridge Road” even though planning for the schools began nearly 20 years ago.