Eden to Enfield Road contract awarded

It was announced last Friday the R402 Edenderry to Enfield road improvement project has been awarded to Coffey Construction. Kildare County Council made the announcement and a statement from the council said it was delighted to announce the project and pleased it was going ahead particularly in this economic climate. Speaking to the Offaly Independent this week Edenderry councillor and NUI Maynooth student Fergus McDonnell, who uses the current Edenderry to Enfield Road at least four days each week, said the planned works will shave five minutes and a lot of stress off his journey time. The road improvement project will see approximately eleven kilometres of roadway realigned and improved between the two towns. The work is to take two years to complete at a cost of approximately €36.5m. Cllr McDonnell, who uses the R402 mostly to get to lectures in NUI Maynooth, said the current road is littered with bends, making overtaking slow moving traffic impossible. "You'd get a lot of traffic built up," he explained, adding that after the completion of the works about five minutes should be knocked off his journey time. "While it doesn't seem a lot the pleasure of a drive should be a lot of what's it's about, not the stress," he said. "On a road like that there's a lot of stress." Cllr McDonnell said too that a great level of both expectation and goodwill exist locally surrounding the project. He said the improvements should also bring greater investment potential to the area. "Anything that can help improve the whole location can only be viewed as an extremely positive measure," he said. Preparatory work on the road improvement has already begun, with many hedgerows removed and an outline of the new sections of road visible according to Cllr McDonnell.