Opening date for Carlow town bus park pushed into next year

The opening date for Carlow town’s Bus Park has been delayed again.

Area Engineer Barry Knowles updated councillors last evening, saying the works will not be completed by the end of next week as expected.

Instead the grand reveal will be in early January.

Cllr John Cassin says it can’t be helped, telling KCLR News “The weather has just completely gone against us, we had heavy rain and now we’ve had the frost and apparently they can’t lay the finishing surface in this frost, it would just crumble away so while it’s disappointing we’ll have to wait for what will be an excellent job”.

He adds “We’ve seen the weather, we’ve seen the rain in November and early December and now we’ve seen the huge drop in temperatures, it was minus four in Carlow town and you simply can’t lay tarmac in weather like that so to be fair as soon as the weather picks up they’ll be in and they’ll finish it and it’ll be back open again it’s not a case of the council not being on top of it it’s a case of the weather simply going against us at the moment”.

Meanwhile, it seems representatives from the National Transport Authority are to pay a visit to Carlow in the new year.

Councillors will get an update on the new town bus from the grouping at their February meeting.

The service is due to start in April or May and Cllr John Cassin says he’s keen to see that happen; “So we’re very hopeful that will be up and running and be available for everybody in town so the pressure will be on the NTA because we’ve been putting pressure on them for quite some time now to get the bus up and running for Carlow town, I’m looking forward to having the NTA in to put some very hard questions to them”.