Plans for an inner relief route in Athy, Co Kildare, would compromise the setting of historic buildings and cut off the last remaining meaningful contact between the town and the river Barrow, it has been claimed.
At a Bord Pleanála oral hearing on the proposed road scheme, due to conclude today, objectors said it would represent the biggest single intervention in Athy since the arrival of the railway more than 150 years ago.
The one-kilometre route, first proposed in 1975, would run to the south of the main street - Duke and Leinster streets - from a new roundabout west of the railway bridge on the Dublin road to another new roundabout on the Kilkenny road.
The scheme has been divisive locally. Even Athy Chamber of Commerce is split, with some members speaking in favour of it and others against. The most vocal opponent is a local solicitor, Frank Taffe, a columnist in the Nationalist. "If we allow this road to proceed, we are planning for traffic - not people," he will tell the hearing today.
"We are prepared to destroy the character of our town when there is no need to do so, given the alternative of an outer ring road."
Kildare County Council maintains the inner relief route is needed because Athy's main street suffers from serious traffic congestion with only one bridge spanning the river - and that dates from the 18th century.
Of the 16,000-plus cars and other vehicles crossing the bridge, it is estimated that 40 per cent is through-traffic. But the council insists an outer ring road would not resolve the problem of congestion in the town centre.
Derek Tynan, a Dublin-based architect who grew up in Athy, said the environmental impact statement on the inner relief route did not examine any alternatives to the original 1975 proposal, and this was contrary to EU law.
He told the hearing that the proposed southern distributor road, running just 500m south of the main street, would cater for through-traffic and any in-town congestion could be dealt with by traffic management measures.
One of the main complaints of the objectors is that the inner relief route would run right past the rear of the courthouse - a protected structure - skirting Athy's main square before rising on an embankment to cross the river.
Though conservation architect Patrick Shaffrey was commissioned to prepare an urban design scheme to transform the road into a street, Mr Tynan said this plan was aspirational and had no statutory standing.
The plan envisages the construction of some 46,452sq m (500,000sq ft) of residential and commercial buildings to provide street frontages for the proposed single-carriageway route, which would run through the backlands of the main street.
Bernard McHugh, planning consultant for the county council, pointed out that a reservation for the route has been maintained for 30 years, so no buildings would need to be demolished.
But Mr Tynan said there had been a sea change in thinking about traffic in towns over the past three decades and this needed to be taken on board by the county council and An Bord Pleanála.
