Bilberry - Embarrassing Road for Greenway Tourism

No, the question was in relation the the preceding post, where someone was questioning why bikes and pedestrians are sharing a path. Just like the entire greenway.

I don't know whether this has been raised here already, but there is an old road-over-railway bridge near the Bilberry terminus of the Waterford and Suir Valley railway. In Celtic Tiger days a block of apartments was build just on the city side of the bridge, effectively blocking the use of the railway trackbed for cycling, railway or anything else. It was as if the then Waterford Corporation wanted to sabotage any Greenway through route forever.

I cycled this at the weekend to get to the Greenway from the train station. Was super quiet because the road is closed to cars, maybe they should keep it that way! Fantastic that you can get directly on to the Greenway from the city centre.

Because Carriganore was being developed in early noughties, the plan was to bring the Suir Valley Railway up onto the road at the Bilberry tunnel and bring it down to Rice Bridge. The engineering at Bilberry Rock would have been very expensive otherwise. I have the plans published by the council somewhere. There were two tracks on the street all the way into Rice Bridge, an in and an out line, presumably to keep normal traffic in mind. It would have been a direct link via light rail from city centre to Carriganore campus so someone was thinking. Unfortunately our vision for Carriganore was not supported by government and HEA.

There’s no cars on the greenway though ,the bilberry section you could see people walking onto the road to avoid cyclists etc

This is the average council performance. They have poor foresight. They have the bones of the past to work with but they work against it.

Still can't believe they spent a small fortune so that Browns lane and Castle street could be reconstructed for lorry traffic.

Trying to drive around Waterford (esp. the inner city) is like entering Aladdin's cave these days. As the OP above mentioned Browns Lane/Castle St mash up is a complete mess up! Especially when you consider the trickle of traffic flowing through that part of town. Only have to go a little further up or down the road to find more nonsense : Mayors Walk/Patrick St/Alexander St or in the other direction Hennessys Rd/Bunkers Hill/traffic lights etc. And only last week overnight WCCC decided to block off the turn in/out of Adelphi Quay from the Quay by erecting a row of bollards in the centre median opposite Reg Towe/Tower Hotel. Another big idea for the traffic mgt heroes behind closed doors. Add this to the virtual closing off of Bank Lane + Mall Lane too and you have everything funnelled down William Street onto the Quay with no escape valve. Thats my tuppence worth. Change for the sake of change is not always the right decision eh?

Agree. 1- way into town from Passage Rd. / St. Patricks Way junction, South Parade, Otterans Place, Catherine's St. get rid of lights at the Maryland and make traffic merge with that from Colbeck St, also forced left onto Parnell or right towards Mall. 1-way out from Tower Hotel to Park Rd/DLS main entrance, Park Rd. Actually, looking at the knock-on effects of that would require more 1-way triangles interconnected but I say bring it on. We're years behind some towns in doing all this and decades behind enlightened European and even US cities.

If you find it hard to drive around Waterford you shouldn't be driving.

Yikes, what an absolute mess that looks like.

Terrific.

are people going to be cycling/walking on that steel thing