[beeintheknow]

Originally Posted by Sponge Bob

They will BOTH need local bypasses as well.

Why? What are you basing that on?

[Sponge Bob]

Originally Posted by beeintheknow

Why? What are you basing that on?

Much of the south and north Galway commuter traffic will not use the motorway...it will be too long. Claregalway and Clarinbridge will still be congested and will require a something small with roundabouts to bypass them locally.

[beeintheknow]

Originally Posted by Sponge Bob

Much of the south and north Galway commuter traffic will not use the motorway...it will be too long. Claregalway and Clarinbridge will still be congested and will require a something small with roundabouts to bypass them locally.

What is your assertion based on?

Surely everything the far side of Tuam travelling into Galway and anything that was previously going from Cork/Limerick etc to the North will now be on the motorway? This will have a major impact on Claregalway.

If this does go ahead, as now looks likely, there will never be another bypass of Claregalway. This is it.

[Sponge Bob]

Not everything, no. There will be No junction Tuam Road <> Galway Bypass so a Dunmore - Parkmore journey would be either:

1. As now Dunmore Tuam Claregalway Parkmore

or

2. Dunmore Tuam Lackagh Athenry Doughiska Parkmore.

Elsewhere

Someone coming from Kilcolgan would have to travel 2 miles out to Kiltiernan to go to Athenry to get to Doughiska ..by Motorway. Around twice the length of the current road. Kilcolgan - Doughiska. They will travel the old road too.

The motorway, built too far east for commuter traffic but ideally placed for long distance north south traffic, will not 'sort out' Clarinbridge and Claregalway which will need their own bypasses still. Way it is.

Castlebar - Limerick and Sligo - Cork will be a doddle though.

[beeintheknow]

How much traffic, percentage wise, do you see being removed from Claregalway by this road?

And there is a junction of new road-Tuam road on the Claregalway side of Tuam.

[Sponge Bob]

I'd say roughly half will divert to the motorway.

Around 22k vehicles move through Claregalway every day ( 14-15k to/from Tuam direction and 6-7k from Roscommon direction) and the road capacity in Claregalway (comfortably) is around 5-6k before the congestion and smell takes its toll on the locals.

Don't forget all the jam dodgers scuttling along narrow boreens/bridges around Cregmore either AND don't forget you can get Motorway Tuam - Lackagh and then jam dodge through Cregmore on your way to Boston or Medtronic.

[pg633]

A Claregalway bypass is already being planned by Galway CoCo.

Discussion here

Originally Posted by Sponge Bob

Don't forget all the jam dodgers scuttling along narrow boreens/bridges around Cregmore either AND don't forget you can get Motorway Tuam - Lackagh and then jam dodge through Cregmore on your way to Boston or Medtronic.

I grew up on one of the rat-runs into Claregalway.

[Iwannahurl]

Originally Posted by antoobrien

Logic - if something is not necessary, it's automatically too big. Yes or no?

Btw what's with the wasting screen space with the whitespace at the end of each message?

No logic, no link, no surprise.

You are the waste of screen space.

Mod note: user banned.

[antoobrien]

Originally Posted by Iwannahurl

No logic, no link, no surprise.

You are the waste of screen space.

I supplied the link earlier

[dloob]

Originally Posted by Sponge Bob

Anyway, back to the good news.

1. Widening of the N67 to Kinvara (and the Kinvara bypass)

Pretty sure I saw something in one of the local papers a few weeks ago about some of this going ahead.
At least part of the ballinderreen to kinavara stretch was being done.
Can't find it at the moment though.

[yer man!]

Originally Posted by dloob

Pretty sure I saw something in one of the local papers a few weeks ago about some of this going ahead.
At least part of the ballinderreen to kinavara stretch was being done.
Can't find it at the moment though.

Yes you're correct, tender approved for the ground inspection works for a 7km road which begins where the road narrows the far side of Ballinderreen and tying into the existing road near Dunguaire Castle. I am not sure if land acquisition has occurred yet, I used to live in a house through which this road will come in very close proximity to. The old road is down to the bare tarmac layer now, its a reddish tarmac. Pure shíte surface anyway.

[Sponge Bob]

The N67 will be done in 2 phases ( apart from a Kinvara bypass which would be phase 3).

Phase 1 to construction soon, c.1km
Phase 2 for investigation, c.4km.

Course we could be years waiting for phase 2 to happen.

[Night Falls]

A few points on this.

There is (finally) an integrated approach to transport issues in Galway. The Smarter Travel proposals mainly deal with walking, cycling and public transport. The GCOB is another aspect of the overall approach.

The red line proposal put forward on this thread does not, in my opinion, do anything to alleviate anything but N59-related traffic, and seems to be very close to the IDA business park in Dangan. Areas such as LA Road and the docks would see precious little benefit, and the N84 would remain as congested as it currently is on the approach to the Menlo Park junction.

Contrary to what was suggested, the Smarter Travel analysis was not carried out on the assumption that the GLUAS system would be in place, and rightly so. It's a private sector proposal (albeit one that the council have agreed to investigate) with no planning permission, and is half-baked, at best (as an example, they have no proposals with how to deal with existing services that would lie under the tracks, barring saying that they'd shut down services when maintenance works needed to take place) and the construction costs put forward are utterly pie-in-the-sky. A city such as galway should be well-served by a bus-based system in any event. What's missing at the moment are the facilities to make it a more reliable service, but these are coming online slowly but surely (and they have funding to implement them). Reliability will also be improved by taking unnecessary journeys out of the city through the construction of the bypass. The two issues are interlinked.

There are permanent park and ride schemes proposed, one on the east of the city and one on the west.

People also need to realise that you do not need to halve traffic volumes to double the capacity of a road. Road and junction capacity is based on an exponential function, so if you even take 20 - 30% of traffic off a particular route, this can result in massive improvements to delay and congestion. Small improvements from a number of schemes, such as the GCOB or a higher take up of public transport, would result in much greater overall improvements.

[Sponge Bob]

A deployment like GLUAS would follow a successful bus route, eg it could be argued that the Merlin park bus route (one of the 10 busiest Bus Eireann routes in Ireland I understand) establishes a base load case for a more robust solution such as a tram.

It may not reach the base load required ...yet ....but if it keep growing one can see it getting there.

There is no corresponding high usage bus route in the west of the city and establishing the hard business case for one will start with the deployment of frequent bus shuttles, ideally 7am to 9pm Monday to Friday.

To my mind the important route is Ballybrit/Parkmore to Uni to Knocknacarra and NOT VIA the City Centre.

Lets see how that goes, I heard CityDirect wanted to run something like that every 15 mins but could only get licenced for every 30 mins for the present. Justmary is the expert on buses around here and I'm sure she'll have something on the subject.

[Night Falls]

Originally Posted by Sponge Bob

A deployment like GLUAS would follow a successful bus route, eg it could be argued that the Merlin park bus route (one of the 10 busiest Bus Eireann routes in Ireland I understand) establishes a base load case for a more robust solution such as a tram.

It may not reach the base load required ...yet ....but if it keep growing one can see it getting there.

There is no corresponding high usage bus route in the west of the city and establishing the hard business case for one will start with the deployment of frequent bus shuttles, ideally 7am to 9pm Monday to Friday.

To my mind the important route is Ballybrit/Parkmore to Uni to Knocknacarra and NOT VIA the City Centre.

Lets see how that goes, I heard CityDirect wanted to run something like that every 15 mins but could only get licenced for every 30 mins for the present. Justmary is the expert on buses around here and I'm sure she'll have something on the subject.

Agree with the bit in bold. From memory (it's been a good while since i looked at the bus study) there were proposals for radial bus routes that would avoid the city centre. It makes sense, but again you need to have the facilities in place to make that attractive to users. That's a big issue in the west of the city, with the BOD / SQ road being the only area that has been upgraded so far.

And for the record, I'm not against a tram system per se, I just haven't been convinced of the appropriateness and feasibility of such a system for Galway. One thing is for sure, it would cost a LOT more to build than those representing GLUAS claim, and the impact on the road network would be substantial.