A WEST Belfast councillor has issued a call to rejuvenate eyesore motorway underpasses that surround the Ladybrook and Blacks Road areas. 

Sinn Féin Councillor Matt Garrett has invited the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) Roads Service to carry out site visit at the M1 underpass on Finaghy Road North, with a view to its regeneration. 

It comes following a recent request from a constituent to remove unsightly graffiti from the bridge in time for the Belfast Marathon earlier this month. 

Cllr Garrett said he had emailed DfI in a bid to find longer term solutions to give the drab motorway underpasses a much-needed facelift. 

"In the email I had sent I had asked them if the graffiti could be painted over in the short term, but in the longer term I asked if we could have a conversation about regeneration of the area around the bridge," he said.

"They went and painted over the graffiti, but they didn't fall over themselves to say let's meet or let's have a discussion about it. 

"If you look at our area, you go over the railway bridge at Blacks Road and the first thing you see is the M1 bridge. If you go to the end of that road and take a right you hit the Kingsway one. If you go left down to Finaghy you have that horrendous railway bridge on Finaghy Road North and then if you go on up a bit you have the M1 bridge at Appleton and Woodland Grange.

"Our area is surrounded by that infrastructure, so for me we should look at ways to deal with it."

In addition to unsightly graffiti, Cllr Garrett said the underpass at Finaghy is "pitch black" at night time and has utility boxes that "are rusted away to nothing". 

He said initiatives like the council's Belfast Canvas project – which allows community artists to reimagine local street furniture – could potentially be extended to the motorway underpasses. 

"There is a precedent there to start looking at that type of thing around the bridges," he said.

"If that's not viable then, for me, they need lit up properly. I don't know if there's a way they could paint them, or put cladding up to brighten them up because at the minute it's horrendous. Somebody described them to me as urban vandalism. Those motorway bridges are obviously essential, they haven't really changed since they were constructed – I think that was in the 1950s. 

"I think now is the time, post-Covid, when we're encouraging people to be out and about and using open spaces, we should be trying to enhance the areas around where we live."