If you’d like to input to the future of how to get around Kilkenny city there’s an event on later today that could be of interest.
As part of its Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, Kilkenny County Council has a public consultation from 4 to 8pm at the Medieval Mile Museum. (Details here).
It’s part of a process that will yield a strategic plan designed to satisfy the mobility needs of people and businesses in the city and its surroundings for a better quality of life.
Until then the current one-way system will continue, though the council recently voted to reverse the direction of the traffic flow.
The local authority’s currently appointing consultants to create a traffic model which would examine the effect of that proposed move as Director of Services Tim Butler explains; “Whether it would have a negative impact on traffic movement throughout the city and potentially then maybe have a negative impact on the businesses, so it’s important, we’re post-Covid at this stage, traffic levels are back to above normal levels or above Covid levels so it’s important we do that study before we proceed with any changes”.
Cllr Eugene McGuinness had hit out at the local authority at a recent city municipal district meeting, annoyed by the time it was taking to move on the issue saying that most of the eight items which form part of the reversal proposal had effectively been struck out.
But Mr Butler says while they can’t remove the streetside bollards until a longer-term decision’s made, he’s adamant that they’ve tackled what they can, telling KCLR News “We’ve decluttered, we’ve removed some of the telephone boxes, we’re removed a lot of the sandwich boards, we’re examining the proposal in relation to loading in the Market Yard, we’ve spoken to the NTA about regulating the buses that traverse the city, there’s a small number of them at the end that are dependent on the current or proposed one-way system and whatever the future’s going to look at”.
