Opinion: ​Will Kilkenny City survive and thrive, or sink with the SUMP?

This week Kilkenny County Council is voting on a Variation to the County Development Plan to adopt a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for Kilkenny City.

The SUMP would block car access through High Street, diverting traffic via residential streets into one-way loops. A one-way bus lane would run through High Street.

Access for emergency services, for city centre residents, the post office, banks, pharmacies, for deliveries and for people with disabilities have not been clarified. On-street car parking would be removed from John Street and public parking spaces in the city centre reduced.

Kilkenny City is the main service centre for the county in retail, health, education, cultural and civic functions. The SUMP measures focus only on in-town car trips – ignoring the thousands of people outside the City who have to drive and many of whom would not be able to walk from ‘park and stride’.

The SUMP noticeably doesn’t include any restrictions on car parking or road access to edge of town businesses, which are in many cases multi national chain operations. Pushing cars out of the city centre would merely displace traffic to the ring road, to the suburbs or to other town centres, so generating more car use, not less.

SUMPS are a 10 year old EU framework aimed at reducing carbon emissions from car traffic in large cities. As such, Kilkenny is not obliged to make a SUMP at all. And by 2035 emissions-free electric cars only will be sold in the EU so that the objective will be met without SUMPs.

The Kilkenny plan has provoked serious concern over the draft plan’s economic and civic impacts. Over 140 Kilkenny City businesses have asked Kilkenny county councillors to vote No to the SUMP. They are asking councillors to save the economic life of the city centre, with up to 1,500 jobs are at risk if this plan goes ahead.

The county council received 81 public submissions on the SUMP consultation, many of which point to the ‘cart before the horse’ approach in the plan – ie stopping car access to the commercial centre before any of the proposed alternative access measures are put in place.

The SUMP mentions future bus services, ‘park and stride’ car parks outside of centre, cycle lane works and – in the long term – lowering the speed limit – but it is clear that these are years off delivery and feared that the council is currently of a mind to push through the High Street scheme without any back up measures in place.

CONSULTED

The public should fully consulted in accord with the planning regulations on clear, readable mapping. However, the Office of the Planning Regulator has advised the council to ‘improve the quality of the mapping to be inserted throughout Volume 2 of the Development Plan to provide clear and legible mapping’. If the Planning Regulator could not understand the maps, what chance is there for the general public?

Kilkenny City centre is a 1,000 year old hub of commerce and civic activity. So far, Kilkenny, with its strong attractions, including projects by the council, has survived much better than many centres in Ireland which are in critical failure.

It has moved through past historic crises with immense determination and ingenuity. Everyone who has worked on or expressed views on the SUMP has done so with the interests of the city and county’s inhabitants at heart.

Rejecting this incomplete, flawed and unready plan would be a positive step by the council, restoring confidence and opening the door to productive collaboration between the people, the councillors and the council on a mobility plan that works for the people of Kilkenny.

Katharine Larkin (M. Phil, town planning) is a town planner who has worked with planning authorities across Ireland and the UK and in community planning projects in Ireland. She has a particular interest in community-led planning.