Solution sought for ‘no man’s land’ on winter salting map

The council has been asked consider extending their winter road salting plan to incorporate the L2032 Redhills to Bunnoe Road, a route used daily by buses ferrying pupils attending the Holy Family School and others. However, elected members were informed it could mean cutting costs elsewhere.

A virtual online meeting of Bailieborough-Cootehill Municipal District councillors was told last week that the road via Cortubber up to Treehoo Cross is often neglected during cold snaps, whereas the route connecting both Redhills and Ballyhaise to Cavan Town was regularly salted.

Fine Gael’s Carmel Brady placed the topic for discussion on the meeting’s agenda, telling those logged on that the issue was starting to affect local postal deliveries.

She said the subject of salting the local road had become a “bone of contention” and postal workers were delaying drop-offs until later in the day when a thaw had set in.

“They’ve said they’re not going to go out until there’s a thaw,” she said of concerns that had filtered back from An Post drivers.

The road between Redhills and Bunnoe is also used by two Local Link bus services.

Cllr Brady reported, having spoken with one driver, that there was a high level of anxiety there too. She said some parts of the road, when icy, had been described to her as “treacherous”, and added that the bus bringing pupils to the Holy Family School from Belturbet also travels the road daily.

“There’s a lot of lying water and when that forms ice...,” Cllr Brady told the meeting, suggesting that there may be a “difficulty” concerning the standard of tarmacadam.

She said of the salting situation at present that the truck “goes as far as Treehoo” but there was “no grit to Cootehill”.

She laughed at the fact that the salt truck carrying salt will often travel that road but never lay down grit.

“It’s a no man’s land for salting,” she said.

Her motion for the route to be added was seconded by Fianna Fáil’s Aiden Brady, who said he had raised the exact same issue 12 months before “but got nowhere”. He said the L2032 was a road that should be on the salting map. “It needs to be looked at seriously.”

Kingscourt-based Cllr Clifford Kelly recommended the Inniskeen Road outside of the east Cavan town as one other that should be considered, saying it was “very, very dangerous” during hard winter periods.

Diverting resources

Responding, Senior Area Engineer for the Bailieborough-Cootehill Municipal District area, Alan Lyons, said that the council provided salt to 575 kilometres of roadway in Cavan, covering just 20% of the overall total distance within the county.

He said that the local authority is already operating with restricted resources and that adding roads would mean diverting “resources” from elsewhere in the budget.

He said that Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) is tasked with managing the central purchase of salt stocks for national, regional and local roads, but that the salting of local roads is funded from the Department’s regional and local road budget. To extend the council’s current Winter Maintenance programme would be to the “detriment of other services”.