Do engineers walk their footpaths?

You have to wonder sometimes about the engineers who design our roads and their ancillaries.

One part about which I've had a longtime poor opinion is the motorway bridge on the Sunnyhill road. Which reflects many similar, and shows a complete lack of understanding of the needs of people who walk.

It seems that it is policy to build footpaths to and from such bridges for a certain distance on either side. Which is good, even if that distance is far too short anyway.



But then these footpaths, wide enough for walking on, and even for pushing a buggy — though admittedly not a very wide one (bottom picture below) — peter out into vestigial paths across the bridges (top picture above). Vestigials which are impossible to even walk on, wide enough for feet but not enough to allow for the swinging arm of the pedestrian.

And certainly not useable by a buggy-pushing mum or dad.

Why? Are road engineers not family people? Do they not have partners who push prams? Or maybe they believe that prams are only pushed in towns or housing estates?

We've had this particular bridge for quite a few years now, ever since Kilcullen was bypassed.

And with the recent growth of the town, especially on the Castlemartin and Cnoc na Greine (Sunnyhill) side, it would seem important that the young families in these new estates should have safe walking and buggy-pushing facilities along a traditional walking road.

OK, so the bridge is built. And the vestigial paths too. But I suggest a change, which would create a dual improvement to the situation.

How about widening the unuseable paths across the bridge? To buggy-width.

It would mean that neither walkers or those with children in pushmobiles would have to step onto the road to cross the bridge.

Sure, it would mean a narrowing of the roadway for cars and trucks. But that too would be an advantage, because it would force a traffic-calming situation on a road which is travelled on at far too fast a lick by too many drivers at the moment.

While they're at it, if Kildare County Council would continue a footpath from the Curragh Road to where the 'motorway' footpath begins, it would give those residents of Castlemartin and Cnoc na Greine a nice 'round' to walk, or push their buggies along, without having to risk going onto the road and its potholes and patches that make it quite dangerous as it stands.

The Council is quick enough to require developers to provide footpaths on the main roads alongside new estates.

It should be equally quick to do its own bit.

- Brian Byrne

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