Celbridge Draft Area Plan - 3500+ new houses

n97 mini

Bringing the population to close to 29,000. Representations from local representatives that it lacks non-residential development, and is unbalanced.

Have your say before Feb 3.

http://kildare.ie/CountyCouncil/Planning/DevelopmentPlans/LocalAreaPlans/DraftCelbridgeLocalAreaPlan2017-2023/

toptom

Was a nice place back in the 70's, The planners lost the run of themselves and turned it into a soulless sprawling suburb of Dublin

mloc123

With the new plans for Celbridge and Leixlip in the next 5-10 years there will be no divide between the two towns apart from the M4

the_syco

Had a reply typed up, but boards lost it

Page 60 of
Draft Celbridge Local Area Plan 2017 - 2023
Is where the pictures are at. It mentions a bridge, but the bridge will only be some silly ped bridge. See Fig 12.1 on page 62. That's a long fuppin walk to the take! A load of bollocks if you ask me, as no-one will walk it. It's one of those "nice touristy things" that locals don't use.

Unless they upgrade the bridge to something like the one at the Salmon Leap Rowing Club, they're just adding to the already crap infrastructure.

IMO, the two things they need to do are;

Expand the Hazelhatch carpark to maybe three or four times it's size, and make it cheaper for anyone who lives in Celbridge. If you want people to use it, at least have the spaces!

Build the bridge to the west of the Mill Community Centre. At the south side, turn that silly crossroad into a T junction with relevant filter roads. Make the north a straight road. Use the bridge as a pedestrian only bridge to allow access tot he pub.

At here do some spaghetti style bridging to eliminate any need for traffic lights and/or a roundabout. This should help eliminate the daily tailbacks that have existed for the past few decades. The additional benefit of building there is that it doesn't get in the way of existing road usage.

Idioteque

the_syco wrote: »

Had a reply typed up, but boards lost it

Page 60 of
Draft Celbridge Local Area Plan 2017 - 2023
Is where the pictures are at. It mentions a bridge, but the bridge will only be some silly ped bridge. See Fig 12.1 on page 62. That's a long fuppin walk to the take! A load of bollocks if you ask me, as no-one will walk it. It's one of those "nice touristy things" that locals don't use.

Found this while reading through it (page 39)

"Road infrastructure is being progressively improved throughout the town, but the bridge remains as a major cause of congestion to traffic flow in the town. Congestion is a significant problem in the town centre and one of the key priorities of this Plan is the provision for enhanced crossings of the River Liffey. The transportation objectives provide for the upgrade of the existing bridge for pedestrians and the possible construction of two new bridges in order to satisfy the need for a new river crossing. This would significantly relieve congestion issues, create improved connectivity within the urban environment and provide resilience for the town from a movement perspective. "

Idioteque

Be nice to see if they follow through on the limiting retail activity types on the main street...I think there's enough Estate Agents, Pharmacist's and hair places for now! Bad need for a decent cafe among a few other types of business

n97 mini

The M4/N4 is already wedged at peak times so I think adding so many more commuters in Leixlip and Celbridge will bring it to a complete standstill. The N4 and the M50 need to be upgraded first.

From what I've read Celbridge will set new records as the biggest town in Ireland that doesn't have x, y and z local amenities if this plan goes ahead - and it probably will as this is North Kildare which is governed from the South.

ChikiChiki

mloc123 wrote: »

With the new plans for Celbridge and Leixlip in the next 5-10 years there will be no divide between the two towns apart from the M4

There will be a huge wave of houses between the two towns and up past Confey. A massive sprawl of houses. the existing retail centres won't be sufficient.

the_syco

n97 mini wrote: »

The M4/N4 is already wedged at peak times so I think adding so many more commuters in Leixlip and Celbridge will bring it to a complete standstill. The N4 and the M50 need to be upgraded first.

Getting rid of the lights at Palmerstown and make it something like the bridge at the Adamstown junction would help the traffic flow greatly of the N4. The M50 itself is fine, most issues is where the traffic goes that I think causes the slow downs.

ChikiChiki wrote: »

There will be a huge wave of houses between the two towns and up past Confey. A massive sprawl of houses. the existing retail centres won't be sufficient.

They need to keep a green belt between the two Celbridge and Leixlip, imo, beyond the Castletown demesne.

Davidth88

Apparently Celbridge has 8 primary schools ?

I can only think of 6

Aghards , Boys school, girls school, Primrose , St Pats and the Educate together

Where are the other two ? Or are they counting Staffan and Ardclough ?

Rain Ascending

The other two are
- The Glebe Primary Montessori School -- a private national school
- St Raphael's Special School -- as the name suggests, for kids with special needs

More generally, on the topic of provision of new schools, the draft report has provision for three additional primary school sites and one secondary school site.

It's a bit difficult to judge if this is good or bad because it's unclear what assumption the document makes for the expected population growth. What is clear, is that the building of these schools is not set as a precondition for any of the listed phases of residential development.

Davidth88

Rain Ascending wrote: »

The other two are
- The Glebe Primary Montessori School -- a private national school
- St Raphael's Special School -- as the name suggests, for kids with special needs

.

Thanks wouldn't have thought of those two , isn't the Glebe really in Leixlip ?

Anyway , I assume the secondary school site is for the Educate together one that is in rather permanent looking temporary accommodation and one of the primary sites would be a real home for St Pats.

If you build 3000 homes , that's going to be a lot of kids , Aghards is already 700+ children so really as big as it can get.

They need to make the extra schools a pre-condition ( a'la Adamstown ) but I imagine that makes too much sense.

I find a lot of the ' waffletalk ' in the report hard to penetrate , was there any provision for other amenities such as a swimming pool/Cinema etc ?

the_syco

Davidth88 wrote: »

Thanks wouldn't have thought of those two , isn't the Glebe really in Leixlip ?

No.

n97 mini

the_syco wrote: »

No.

Permanently closed it says on the google maps link you posted!

That school is now up beside Barnhall rugby club, right beside tge clubhouse.

L1011

And was gutted by fire last week I believe

wintertime

Indeed our school building burnt down last week but we are still open and it's business as usual. The Glebe closed down last summer and the parents & teachers set up Weston Primary Montessori School and we are based on the Barnhall Rugby grounds. Unfortunately due to the fire we are now in the Clubhouse. Barnhall Rugby grounds are in both leixlip and Celbridge so that's where the confusion comes from. I think the original entrance to the club was in Celbridge and the current entrance is in Leixlip but the grounds are in both parishes.

I hope I don't get into trouble with the mods here but I would like to thank everyone who helped us out this week especially

Our fantastic Parents, Teachers and Kids who have rallied round the school.

Barnhall Rugby Club and especially Conor and the team of guys managing the grounds - everyone associated with this club should be so proud of it. You are a fantastic bunch!

Primrose Hill COI school who had contacted their parents on Sunday afternoon looking for donations of school books which enabled us to open as usual on Monday morning. We will never be able to thank you guys enough.

Frank O'Rourke TD for his trojan work in trying to get us more suitable temporary accommodation. Also Catherine Murphy and Joe Neville. We are very lucky with our North Kildare Representatives .

Celbridge Community School and Educate Together school in Celbridge. Your support and help is fantastic and again I don't think we will ever be able to fully thank you guys.

The brilliant publishers CJ Fallon, Folens and Scholastic who contacted us on Monday and allowed our teachers to go and pick out all the necessary books so that the children can follow the curriculum as usual.

Banner Printing who has offered to reprint our banner again for free.

Lastly but not least I would like to thank the communities of Celbridge and Leixlip. You have fantastic community spirit and I don't think that will ever change.

Regards
Everyone at Weston Primary Montessori School

TheUnderfaker

the_syco wrote: »

Getting rid of the lights at Palmerstown and make it something like the bridge at the Adamstown junction would help the traffic flow greatly of the N4. The M50 itself is fine, most issues is where the traffic goes that I think causes the slow downs.

Does anybody know if there are actually any plans to do this? Tailbacks on the N4 are an absolute joke. There's tens of thousands of new houses planned between Lucan, Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth and something really needs to be done about those lights or the problem is going to get so much worse

Rosahane

TheUnderfaker wrote: »

Does anybody know if there are actually any plans to do this? Tailbacks on the N4 are an absolute joke. There's tens of thousands of new houses planned between Lucan, Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth and something really needs to be done about those lights or the problem is going to get so much worse

They also need to move ahead with the proposed new road from the Islandbridge Con Colbert Road? junction to the Gates at the Phoenix Park. It's daft having all the N4 and a lot of the N7 traffic queuing in single file past Houston Station.

Edit. I remember this was planned a number of years ago but I can't find any current plan for it now.

Edit II. interestingly, Google has ceased to be my friend and I can't find anything about this plan. From what I can remember it was about nine tears ago and the plan had a new road continuing from the end of Con Colbert through Clancy Barracs and coming out on the other side of Heuston at the Park Gates. It also included (I think) an upgrade to the exit from the Bluebell road on to Con Colbert and an upgrade of the Islandbridge junction.

It seems to have been lost in the rush to put lots of apartments in the Clancy Barracks site and has probably been superseded by a new Owen Keegan cycle lane

Stealthirl

L1011 wrote: »

And was gutted by fire last week I believe

Second time that's happened
I was a student there when it was in Castletown House,The Poplars and was part of the 5/6th class the moved down to the upstairs part of Barnhall in the early 90s

Rain Ascending

The projected population increase for north Kildare will cause increasing stress on the traffic infrastructure. The addition of a third lane at junction 5 westwards on the M4 is another critical upgrade and is said to be in early stages of planning. When (and if!) it is completed, the evening outbound situation should improve, but the Palmerstown junction will be immediately overloaded in the morning inbound crunch -- today the J7-J6-J5 stretch of the M4 regularly holds back traffic.

However, the big critical piece of infrastructure for north Kildare is Dart Underground and Pascal Donohue's failure to keep the associated Railway Order alive was and is nothing short of disastrous for the area. That project had the potential to massively increase capacity on both the Maynooth and the Hazelhatch lines and transform the service on both. Still, one lives in hope that it will eventually be delivered.

So, coming back to the thread's subject, the draft Local Area Plan does make some nods in the direction of the importance of the Hazelhatch train station, with the core strategy list including a long-term investigation of how to develop Celbridge towards Hazelhatch, a plan to create a plan, so to speak.

More importantly, the document heavily pushes the idea of unifying the larger norther part, with the town centre, to the smaller southern part that is gradually expanding out towards Hazelhatch. It proposals not one but four new crossings of the Liffey (two vehicular and two pedestrian). This should improve ease of access to the railway station.

daheff

one thing i noticed is that the plan still has there being a link road through hazelhatch park/simmonstown estates.

They tried to make this a main road recently, but backed down due to lots of local opposition.


I agree Celbridge needs a new link road around it, but its madness to have a road going through 3 housing estates, past a creche) as a main link road. They need to put this around the outside of housing developments, not through them.

Rain Ascending

daheff wrote: »

one thing i noticed is that the plan still has there being a link road through hazelhatch park/simmonstown estates.

They tried to make this a main road recently, but backed down due to lots of local opposition.


I agree Celbridge needs a new link road around it, but its madness to have a road going through 3 housing estates, past a creche) as a main link road. They need to put this around the outside of housing developments, not through them.

Yeah, I can imagine that the local residents are not happy about the significant increase of traffic implied by the either of the two "near"-term vehicular bridge options. Even the longer-term, third bridge feeds its link road into the through road.

As a matter of curiosity, what was the original plan for that road? It does have a lot of features that you wouldn't expect of an estate road: offline cycle-paths (albeit very bumpy ones!), no properties directly opening on it, parallel access roads.

Taking out the crayons, one could imagine that the third bridge running further south of the other two, could run its link road across country to the roundabout at Hazelhatch train station and its large carpark. Not sure how it would be financed though. The CPO would be quite large, making it tempting for Kildare CoCo to attach further (very big!) developments to its north, but avoiding the land prone to flooding just by the train station. Unfortunately, Kildare County Council have yet to work out their strategy for this area south of Celbridge...

daheff

Rain Ascending wrote: »

As a matter of curiosity, what was the original plan for that road? It does have a lot of features that you wouldn't expect of an estate road: offline cycle-paths (albeit very bumpy ones!), no properties directly opening on it, parallel access roads.

As I understand it, the intention was always for this to be part of a ring road around Celbridge. There is walkways with (extremely poor) off road cycle-paths. There are properties that face onto the road/ border the road though. Essentially the road is a road through 3 housing estates. Compare this road to the link between the Dublin road & Hazelhatch road (near Supervalue) and the difference is telling. That link road is a proper through road. It goes beside (and not through) estates. The road is nice & wide, there is room for a cycle path at the side of the road (without cars needing to squeeze cyclists). Any housing developments beside the road are properly fenced/walled away from the road.


I get that Celbridge has issues with traffic. It always has though and a lot of it is due to congestion at the bridge. Sort that (without pushing the congestion upstream/or to another place) and the problems will largely disappear. And cut out all the useless traffic lights...2 sets at supervalue, another at Aldi....they are just causing more traffic flow issues.

shanev13

Rain Ascending wrote: »

It proposals not one but four new crossings of the Liffey (two vehicular and two pedestrian). This should improve ease of access to the railway station.

I only see reference to two new bridges on page 39 of the LAP - see image attached. One new pedestrian/cycle bridge in the KDA2 development (Donaghcumper), and one new vehicular bridge located at the Topaz on the Clane Road. Where are the others? thanks

Joe Public

Those blue markings are possible bridges, one pedestrian and two vehicular

Rain Ascending

shanev13 wrote: »

I only see reference to two new bridges on page 39 of the LAP - see image attached. One new pedestrian/cycle bridge in the KDA2 development (Donaghcumper), and one new vehicular bridge located at the Topaz on the Clane Road. Where are the others? thanks

Have a look at the "Transport and Movement" map on page 77. It has all the bridges, existing and proposed. The four that I was counting were:

• One from the two vehicular bridges proposed in the recent feasibility report. These are the ones that Joe Public highlights above. They are mutually exclusive -- only one of these will be built.
• The pedestrian bridge linking Main St with the proposed new town extension in the easternmost portion of Donaghcumper.
• The long-term aim of a road bridge further to the south.
• Opening (or reopening?) of public access to a pedestrian bridge at the southern tip of the Celbridge Abbey grounds, called the Rock Bridge. Perhaps not exactly a "new" bridge , but a river crossing nonetheless.

Looking for text to back up the map, puts me on less firm ground. The first two are mentioned often enough. The third is briefly mentioned in a specific objective:

MTO3.11: To protect from development a route for a potential new road (including a new bridge over the River Liffey) between Clane Road (near the Celbridge North Kildare Educate Together School) and Hazelhatch Park.

The opening up of public access to the Rock Bridge is not explicitly mentioned. Instead there a general objective around pathways along the Liffey:

EDO2.3: To support and facilitate the development of an integrated network of Greenways and Heritage Trails along suitable corridors in Celbridge, including pathways along the RiverLiffey corridor, subject to relevant environmental assessments.

I suspect that I shouldn't hold my breath for that one, even if the Rock Bridge is a bit of an architectural gem.

shanev13

RainA,

Thanks for responding.

I believe EDO2.3: is quite vague. Access to the Rock Bridge seems tied to access to the Abbey grounds. I haven't seen any direct mention of this. Anyway, we can agree this "bridge" is not going to help the traffic chaos.

Regarding MTO3.11, this is purely aspirational, as any future LAP can simply ignore this policy. So again, any new bridge would likely be 10 years away and won't help with the traffic chaos.

The pedestrian/cycle bridge into the Donaghcumper lands would be an asset for many, but this development will receive much attention & objections and again can't be relied upon to allieve the traffic problems.

So we are down to one new bridge on a yet to be defined site. Both sites have advantages, but again both are likely to arise objections from the housing estrates most closely affected.

I fear a long drawn out saga before any new vehicular bridge is open to the public, and we must remember that the existing pedestrian bridge (from 1992) is still technically a "temporary" structure (as far as I know) so it's clear that KCC don't move quickly on this topic.

Thanks also JoeP for the helpful map!

Rain Ascending

shanev13 wrote: »

I fear a long drawn out saga before any new vehicular bridge is open to the public

I agree that the likelihood of a significant improvement in the traffic situation in Celbridge in even the medium term doesn't look good. The lack of capital budgets, local opposition to any concrete proposals made, bigger traffic issues in at least one other key local centre (Maynooth), and a county council that doesn't have a great reputation as regards the north of the county, all point to slow progress.

So how to read the proposed local area plan? It can't deal with any of the above factors. In some ways, it articulates a vision and strategy for Celbridge, along with some key practicalities to try to deliver on these (e.g. zoning). What I take from the number of bridges highlighted is a recognition that we need greater permeability, making it easier to get from A to B on a variety of modes, both vehicular and alternatives like cycling and walking. Clearly one of the biggest barriers is the River Liffey itself.

Incidentally, there are other aspects of vision are implicit in the document:
- Extension of the town centre
- Greater development south of Liffey
- Substantial residential expansion
- Local economic development focused on retail and tourism
In a way, the document forces us to ask the question: where is Celbridge going?

The detail of how to get there, is more difficult -- as our discussion on the bridges shows...

Joe Public

Rain Ascending wrote: »

Clearly one of the biggest barriers is the River Liffey itself.

Just let on the river disappeared overnight then what are the possibilities?

Rain Ascending

Joe Public wrote: »

Just let on the river disappeared overnight then what are the possibilities?

Interesting question. A few thoughts:

• Easier access to northside facilities from the southside, effectively giving greater choice. Some examples include the new primary healthcare centre, the library and schools. For the latter, the bridge across the Liffey is a real issue since morning drop-offs are, of course, during the peak traffic time.
• One possible means of expanding the town center opens up. The proposed Donaghcumper development is controversial, but it has one interesting aspect of unifying the St Wolstan's shopping centre (anchored by SuperValu) with Main St. In one move, it would double the size of the town centre, with a largish carpark at one end. (By the way, my definition of a town centre is an area that a person would regularly walk through with contiguous retail opportunities along the way.)
• Alternative pedestrian/cycle routes across town will encourage people out of cars. For example, some of the key routes today are bleak enough experiences for somebody on foot. In particular, I'm thinking of the Dublin road between the Abbey Lodge and SuperValu and the Clane Road/R403 from St Raphael's to the junction with Church Road. There's important architecture to be preserved there and that limits other means of improving things.

This may sound theoretical, but I've lived in a suburban area with a high degree of permeability between estates and through to the regional retail/commercial centre. For local trips, I was much more inclined to walk than to take the car as a result.

Joe Public

Rain Ascending wrote: »

Interesting question. A few thoughts:

Previously you mentioned the River Liffey was one of the biggest barriers but in itself it is not the problem it's how the town and road system developed around it from the very beginning. Nothing has changed in the road infrastructure in the immediate vicinity of the river Liffey since the inception of Celbridge even though the population has increased from a few hundred to over 20 thousand. The current bridge is a bottleneck and needs to be widened and at the same time preserve the traditional stonework. Easier said than done, I know, but to add a whole new bridge doesn't look like it will happen because it would cause too many objections as there are not suitable locations that are sensitive to the character of Celbridge.

Building a bridge upstream would end up leading into unsuitable small roads. Building a bridge at the slip would have major objections due to the historic nature of that end of the village.