Tipperary roads maintenance services ‘at capacity’ as costs mount
Council maintenance services in Tipperary are under severe pressure, councillors heard at a recent municipal district meeting.
At the January meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District, independent councillor Joe Hannigan asked the council’s roads section if street sweeping could be carried out on the cycle lanes along the old N7 road to Dublin.
Cllr Hannigan said that a lot of cyclists use this route, and that he had been approached by constituents asking him to ensure that the cycle lane was cleaned up on a regular basis.
In response to Cllr Hannigan, a representative from the district’s roads section said that while the council does clean this area occasionally, there was no scope to do it on a regular basis due to the cost of street sweepers.
"It’s a colossal length, it’s something we might do on a one-off basis, but it’s above and beyond what we would consider maintenance to be sending a sweeper on a weekly basis,” councillors were told.
Reacting to this, district Cathaoirleach Cllr Phyll Bugler said that many people don’t know how much it costs to run street and road sweepers.
"We need to explain to people what a sweeper costs per day, it’s in the region of €750 per day for a sweeper,” Cllr Bugler said.
"It’s a colossal amount,” the roads engineer said, adding that Tipperary County Council would not be able to justify that cost on a regular basis.
"We’ll have a look and see, if we can justify it, we’ll do it, but we can’t do it on a regular basis because of the costs,” he explained.
Gritting of roads across the county is another area that is facing funding challenges, the meeting was told.
Cllr Séamie Morris asked if the roads in around Lisbunny Industrial Estate in Nenagh could be gritted, with high volumes of traffic using it to bring their cars for NCTs.
"This estate is now owned by the council, and during the ice it was very slick out there, so I’m looking for that road to be added to the roads in town that are salted, because people are going down to the NCT there and it’s deadly,” Cllr Morris said.
Councillor Pamela Quirke-O’Meara also joined the call for an increase in roads being salted, handing the roads engineer a petition to salt the road from Newport to Nenagh, signed by over 200 residents.
"This particular road the community is really pushing for it to be salted,” Cllr Quirke-O’Meara said.
In response, the roads engineer said that gritting was already at capacity across the county, with no scope for any roads to be added to the winter maintenance programme.
"Salting is a big issue,” he said. “Salting is at absolute capacity, and there isn’t any scope to add any roads or school routes.
"We get a lot of requests on this, but we’re carrying out more salting in this county than Donegal, and each of the routes are at maximum capacity, Routes are being prioritised, predominantly on the regional roads and at this stage, we don’t have the resources or the finances to extend that salting programme,” councillors were told.
Councillors were told that, despite demand, no additional resources are currently available to expand winter road maintenance across the county.