Wicklow Residents Encouraged To Give Feedback On Greenway Expansion Plans

Residents in West Wicklow are being encouraged to have their say on expansion plans for the Blessington Greenway. 

The amenity currently links the town with Russborough House.

Under the plans the route will run for 42 kilometres and cover a number of villages including Ballyknockan, Valleymount and Lacken. 

A public consultation for the project closes at half five on Friday evening.

In order to provide a safe route for the pedestrians and cyclists across the three existing bridges (Knockiernan Bridge, Baltyboys Bridge and Valleymount Bridge) traffic lights are proposed at the bridge crossings to manage a new shuttle system for vehicular traffic. This will create space within the existing bridge cross section for the provision of a shared use path to accommodate users of the Greenway. 

• In order to include this shared use path across each of the three bridges, the carriageway needs to be narrowed to a single traffic lane to be used in turn from each direction to cross the bridge.
• Entry on the bridges is proposed to be signalised to control when traffic can cross without conflicting with opposing traffic.
• The traffic lights on either side of the bridge will operate 24/7.
• The traffic lights will generally have a cycle time of less than 90 seconds (i.e.  a driver will have to wait 90 second before getting a green light again). Based on the current assessment it is anticipated that on average there will be three vehicles waiting at the traffic lights at any one time.  The expert modelling results show that there are no capacity concerns with the introduction of this shuttle working on the bridges.
• A similar traffic light system is in place on the N81 and is operating very satisfactory without causing any undue delays given the volumes on a national route.

 A copy of the plans and particulars of the proposed development are available on the consultation website of Wicklow County Council here