Mullingar town growing at 'incredible rate'

The senior engineer in charge of overseeing developments in the Municipal District of Mullingar and Kinnegad, has said this week that Mullingar is growing at an incredible rate.

The comment was made by district engineer, Pat Kavanagh, at the May meeting of the district, where he was asked by councillors for an update on traffic flows in Mullingar in light of the growing size of the town.

“Mullingar is expanding at an incredible rate,” Mr Kavanagh said, adding that, however, he believed that at present traffic is moving reasonably well in the centre.

“I don’t see major issues,” he said.

“Obviously, the town is growing and we’re continuously looking at traffic and transport impact assessments with all of the new developments. I don’t think there’s a day I don’t spend time looking at some planning application to see the impact on traffic throughout the district.”

Mr Kavanagh stated that there are two engineers working full time on planning reports for the district.

“The amount of developments coming in for Mullingar is incredible and the size of the developments are big,” he said, adding that the same applies in Kinnegad and Castlepollard.

“It’s incredible some of the stuff that’s coming in,” he continued.

However, he assured members with every new application, a traffic and transport assessment is carried out to see what impact the project will have on neighbouring junctions and the town centres and traffic movement.

In terms of traffic through Mullingar, he said the introduction of the new bus service was “a huge help” and he went on to state that the council is shortly to appoint a new traffic signal contractor for the county to examine lights and the signal sequences.

Costs

Separately, Mr Kavanagh revealed that the council is facing a severe escalation in costs due to the fuel price hikes resulting from the war in the Middle East.

Commenting on this year’s Local Improvement Schemes (LIS) spend, Mr Kavanagh said that the additional costs were “huge”.

“To sit here and say we have the same value over our funds that we had in January would be crazy,” he said, adding that in just the last few weeks, the increase was running at from 10% to 14% on some projects.

Fuel was, he pointed out, the big factor, but there was also an increase in the price of pitch, which was affecting road surfacing. “There’s huge fuel consumption, both from the trucks and the product itself and they’re oil-based products.” He said the issue has been raised among senior management at the council, and at department level.

“Where it will end I don’t know. It’s depending on what happens in the Iranian war, and who knows?” he said.

Continuing, Mr Kavanagh explained that the price hikes are affecting costs in other areas of the council’s activities, “even the simple things like grass cutting”.

Giving some reassurance, Mr Kavanagh said the council is, however, “managing a way through”.

“We haven’t taken out any project from our works programme,” he said.