Cycling/Walking around the city

The National Transport Authority has published a new best practice guide for local authorities, which aims to address the crucial issue of permeability and severance in urban areas.

Promoting walking and cycling as modes of transport is a key objective of the National Transport Authority, particularly for shorter length journeys. Historically many urban areas in Ireland have been designed without recognition of the importance of walking and cycling, which has resulted in travel by these modes being inconvenient, circuitous, and in some cases less safe than they should be.

In many locations, the preponderance of cul-de-sacs, and the lack of access links through estate boundaries, renders the walk or cycle to schools or shops significantly longer than the straight line distance and gives little choice to people other than the use of their car. This adds to local congestion, to the cost of people’s daily transport, to local air and noise pollution and it requires additional car parking at each destination. To compound all of these impacts, it also removes the potential for people to combine their trips to school, shops etc. with the health benefits of daily exercise.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/news/permeability-in-existing-urban-areas-best-practice-guide/

This is long overdue, in my opinion. Here in Galway the norm is to make large residential areas impermeable to pedestrians, cyclists and bus users. In addition to the high walls around estates, pedestrian short-cuts are routinely closed off, bike paths are obstructed with kissing gates and car-dependent individuals and groups do their utmost to ensure that pedestrians and cyclists don't succeed in finding any shortcuts to schools, shops, bus stops or each other's homes.

I've only just seen the guide, and at first glance it doesn't appear to offer any solutions to the problem of impermeable estates closed off by high walls. I know of four adjacent estates, totalling a few hundred houses, where the only solution would be to demolish people's properties. Either that or build tunnels or elevated greenways, which will never happen.

The photo shows a wall smeared with axle grease in an attempt to stop people climbing over a wall to access the Western Distributor Road, itself a pedestrian-hostile environment.

I'm glad the National Transport Authority is "sensitive" enough to recognise the 'planning' mess created by Galway City Council, among others.

National Transport Authority wrote:

It was commonplace for ... developments to be characterised by a preponderance of cul-de-sacs, high walls or railings with no breaks along long distributor roads, and with no linkages to existing development areas or to local services. ... The social objectives of planning ... were not met. In fact the exact opposite was achieved in many locations throughout Ireland, as segregation between development areas contributed to a general failure to foster community spirit and boost social capital.

...

These ... patterns, evident in many locations, have resulted in unprecedented dependency on the private car for trips for all purposes nationally. While public transport has also suffered due to the creation of complex and impenetrable road layouts, it is the ability to walk and cycle to local services, jobs and public transport itself that has been most noticeably affected.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Permeability_Best_Practice_Guide_NTA_20151.pdf

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