Recent works by Kildare County Council to provide parking around Sallins village have had some unintended and imho detrimental effects for traffic flows and traffic safety around the village.

In particular the provision of extra parking spaces between the Railway Inn (Neds) and Bamburys bookmakers and down as far as the church all along that street have caused havoc for many motorists wanting to use that junction on a daily basis. The road is simply not wide enough to take two lines of traffic along with a line of parking spaces and it means an effective one way street is created at busy times.

Click to view diagram at scale

And there is rarely a quiet time here, between morning and afternoon school runs, morning and evening commuters accessing the N7 and church goers and other road users at various times of day. What ends up happening, literally daily and several times a day, is that a queue of cars is backed up trying to exit the side street, cars turning off main street cannot access (as only room for a single lane) and cars end up stuck half-in, half-out of the junction.

It is particularly difficult for traffic from the Osberstown side, who are frequently unable to access the side street and forced to go up further – to the canal bridge taking a right turn, literally across the path of oncoming traffic as the turn is beneath the crest of the bridge and people are taking their life into their hands turning blind across the road.

Every time I see the situation, and I’ve encountered it myself dropping the children to school, it makes me wonder what kind of research, if any, was done by the roads or planning engineers before these spaces were put in. There have already been near-misses, with at least one incident involving a cyclist and I really believe something has to be done here.

I have submitted a document which is available here on the issue to Kildare County Council, and via the offices of Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick.

I have included longer term proposals, such as a new canal bridge opposite the school, with a one way around the canal. I would also love to see the provision of a pedestrian walkway adjacent to the existing canal bridge, ala Newbridge. But in the short term something has to be done and soon.

Possible one-way system in longer term ; click to enlarge