Road improvement works to be carried out on 'dangerous' Kildare road

Road improvement works are to be carried out on Loughlinstown Road, Celbridge, Co Kildare in light of safety concerns raised by Labour councillor Rupert Heather.

Cllr Heather raised his motion at a meeting of Celbridge-Leixlip Municipal District, held on Friday May 16 last.

In his motion, which cited a recent serious incident on the road, Cllr Heather called for the council to implement safety measures on Loughlinstown Road, such as centre markings, speed bumps, speed restrictions and signage.

Cllr Heather told the council that Loughlinstown Road is inadequate for the volume and speed of traffic seen there. There is also a very dangerous 'S-bend', he said, which was highlighted recently where a car lost control and “flipped over” onto the road.

Cllr Heather said he gets a lot of queries about Loughlinstown Road from local people in the area and it was his belief that additional traffic calming measures would need to be considered on the 'S-bend' in particular.

In the medium term, he suggested traffic monitoring, though he was not sure how feasible that was.

There was also potentially a path to the care home, the football grounds and the golf course, he said, although he was aware that this is a narrow road and that it presents a number of challenges.

The Labour councillor said there were also longer-term implications in terms of traffic being diverted onto Loughlinstown Road, and he “hoped” the council would continue coming up with solutions to deal with the problem.

Supporting the motion, Cllr Lumi Panaite Fahey (FG) said there was another issue in relation to Loughlinstown Road which needed to be considered, which was that it is “quite overgrown” and the trees lining the road made the road signs hard to see.

Again, she asked the council to continue monitoring the road for these concerns.

Cllr Nuala Killeen (SD) said people appeared to be using the road as a shortcut, and it was far busier than it was two or three years ago, which was exacerbating problems at the location.

Responding to councillors, a council official pointed out that Loughlinstown Road is a road in a rural setting, with a 60kph speed limit.

The official pointed out that there is already signage on the road, consisting of driver feedback signage, 'Dangerous Bend Ahead' signage, and '60kph' signage.

The official suggested that the issue was one of driver behaviour, and “we're pretty much doing as much as we can on it.”

Some work would be carried out on the road over the summer, but in principle this was a driver behaviour issue and a minority of people speeding on the road, he said.

If people were driving around the 'S-bend' at high speeds, “there's very little we can do.”

On a positive note, a report issued by the council stated that a further 1.0km section of Loughlinstown Road from the entrance of Ballyouster football club towards Hazelhatch train station will be resurfaced later this year.

It was also noted there is “sufficient road width on this section to install a centreline marking.”

The report concluded by stating that additional on-road traffic calming markings can be installed following the completion of this work.

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