Annual Report 2012.pdf (size 5.8 MB) - Offaly County Council

is a requirement of the ESB that shared assets are debundledi.e. separate light from ESB apparatus. It is anobjective of Offaly County Council to carry out this debundlingon a phased basis. The estimate to carry outthis work for the County is approximately €500,000. Anysavings made in the maintenance budget at present arere-invested in the asset de-bundling. The asset debundlingis progressed as funding allows.Unfortunately the Public Lighting budget Allocation wasreduced in July by €62,000 giving a 2012 revisedallocation of €405,000. This budget cut reduces ourability to upgrade the public lighting network.It is proposed to re-tender the public lightingmaintenance in conjunction with the neighboring localauthorities in early 2013.Smarter Travel (Allocation; €424,000)Funding of €424,000 was received from the DTSS underthe smarter travel initiative for the following projects in2012: -1. R420 Cycle route from Tullamore to Clara to Moate€400,000;2. Active Towns Walking & Cycling Strategy for Birr &Edenderry € 24,000.These projects were commenced/completed in Novemberand December 2012Winter Maintenance(2012 NRA Allocation €158,800; 2012 DTTS Allocation€162,863 – Total €321,663)The 2012 allocation is €190,487 less than the 2011allocation. This is mainly due to the fact that the NRA andthe DTTS are now procuring the salt and allocating anallowance to each Local Authority. The 2011/2012 seasonwas mild in comparison to the previous 2 years with aminimum requirement to salt any roads.The Co Council salted roads on 25 nights during thisperiod. In 2011 a review of the salting routes wascarried out with the objective that no driver was outlonger than approximately 3 hours salting at any onetime. A further review of the Winter Service Plan andSalting Routes was again carried out in 2012. In thisreview we had the benefit of traffic counts which werecarried out on all the Regional Roads in the county during2012. The traffic counts allowed us to prioritize salting onRegional Roads and resulted in a number of additionalroads over the previous salting plan as follows: -• R438 – Cloghan to Anglers Rest;• R356 – Wynnes Cross to Banagher;• R436 – Ferbane to Clara;• R357 Cloghan to Shannonbridge;Offaly Local Authorities Annual Report 201267