Pedestrians facing ‘narrow escapes’ in Waterford village due to poles on footpaths

There have been a “couple of narrow escapes” in a village in County Waterford due to the position of electricity poles, a council meeting has heard.

Labour Party councillor John Pratt raised the issue at the October meeting of the Dungarvan-Lismore District.

Cllr Pratt said: “Just in relation to Barrack Street in Cappoquin, it’s gone extremely bad now with traffic.

“What’s making it worse is that there’s actually about eight poles on the footpath and I’d say about five or six of them are actually plonked in the middle of the footpath.

“You actually couldn’t possibly walk past them with a wheelchair or a pram or anything so people have no other choice but to go out onto the road.

“It’s been there forever - those poles - and I just feel this has to be looked at.”

He called on parking to be made available elsewhere to alleviate the traffic problems in the area.

Cllr Pratt also called for something to be done to address the issue of the electricity poles.

“The footpath then and the issue with the footpath just makes it [worse]. There have been a couple of narrow escapes there as well with the traffic coming down there.

“At times, when the traffic is so bad, it’s actually not easy to come off [the footpath] because there’s traffic coming from both sides.

“I would ask that we would really seriously look at it and see can we find a way to sort both issues, I suppose.”

In response, Maria Goff, Senior Executive Engineer at Waterford City and County Council, said that the local authority will examine the issue.

Ms Goff said: “With regards to Barrack Street and the ESB poles along there, we can consider that for our programme for next year.

“There will obviously be significant costs because it will involve the removal of those poles.

“There is a hefty cost with the ESB and it would also require a lot of civil works because I can imagine a lot of those are attached to buildings.”