Where The Bollards Meet The Road

We reckon there’s a tree going here… DELGANY 7JULY24

t might just be the busiest village in Ireland when it comes to traffic, so, it’s good to see that the local district engineer is taking a long, hard look at Delgany’s roads.

That it should, at this point, have at least two zebra crossings seems to have escaped his speed radar though.

Rumours abound that trying to make your way across the main road at Jacob’s Ladder will be included in next year’s Squid Games: The Irish Challenge have yet to be confirmed though, so maybe Wicklow County Council are holding out for a deal. As Wicklow Planning continue their cunning plan to squeeze a town inside a village.

In the meantime, for those of you curious about the council graffiti hitting Delgany’s roads of late, here’s the lowdown from Ruairi himself…

1) Installation of Bollards

Further to previous discussions on the matter I wish to advise that WCC are progressing the installation of temporary flexible bollards along the R762 Church Rd from the Round the Bend to the Convent Rd Junction. The bollards will be placed just inside the yellow line marking that was sprayed on the road earlier this week. We shall also relocate the two tree planter boxes that were previously used during a similar exercise outside the Firehouse Bakery immediately west of this location on Church Rd, to the repurposed road carriageway area behind the bollards. The trees will help to emphasise and protect the pedestrian nature of this repurposed space.

These bollards are, up to the entrance into the Wicklow Arms car park, virtually along the proposed new kerb line of the Delgany Village Accessibility Scheme along the R762.

2) Road safety at the section near Jacob’s Ladder.

WCC has been working with its consultants for the Delgany Village Accessibility Scheme and the developer-owner of the site and their consultants. You may well have noticed the painted blue circles with a cross in the middle of them along the road from Glen Road to Killincarrig Cross. This is the design alignment for the scheme. This was set out to see where there might be complications with the layout and existing infrastructure. The road between the church and Church Cottage is probably one of the trickiest spots due to the fixed nature of each structure. We have also the existing underground infrastructure to contend with; for example the proposed kerb alignment on the northern side of the road outside the church can be seen to pass directly over two manhole covers for the main public waste water sewer in the control of Uisce Éireann. The proposed alignment on the south side of the road also poses some challenges for the owner of Church Cottage and their planning permission for that property.

We carried out a review of the alignment on site last week and have come to an agreed alignment with some suggested minor alterations to make the scheme work in this location. We will be going back to the owner-developer with the revised alignment which will allow them to commence constructing the new footpath on the southside of the road for the extents of their development.

Nice. We think. Now, get those zebra crossings sorted. And the underground tunnel for all the traffic heading to and from the N11.