Kildare Councillor pushes for traffic to be banned from Naas Town Centre

Citing climate action, ‘public realm promotion’ and ‘carbon footprint reduction’ as reasons for the potential change.

A proposal to ban traffic completely from Naas Town Centre will come before a Naas Municipal District meeting next week, Kildare Now reports.

Independent councillor Seamie Moore wants to close the Main Street and Town Centre to “motorised traffic”, for one day a month to start with.

Moore suggested that the pedestrianisation could be trialled  for one Sunday per month initially, during “the summer period covering the months from May to September 2023.”

According to Kildare Now, Moore is looking for support from the six other councillors on the NMD to “set precepts for future climate action and environmental changes, public realm promotion, carbon footprint reduction and a return to community interaction in a town retail theatre, by agreeing to (this).”

Similar plans to overhaul traffic on some of the busiest streets in Dublin are set to get underway next year – Car lanes are set to be phased out completely from College Green in the city centre, as part of a wider plan to remove Dublin City traffic altogether.

Speaking to the Business Post earlier this year, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan said of the plans:

All these wide one-way multi-lane streets which are designed for as many cars as possible, that is no longer the way to go.

Dublin City Council has committed to changing all that, to take the traffic out of the city centre in the way that I said, and to do that within the next three years. That is an example of the type of project we need to do.

Header image via Shutterstock 

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