M6 - Galway City RR - ABP planning cancelled. Other solutions?

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120188329#Comment_120188329

Just to reflect back on this statement.

Is it not exactly how the World works??

The Tara Skryne valley, the Glen Of The Downs Woods, the Archaeology at Carrickmines...

All insurmountable legal obstacles in their day, yet look, there they are, all built and carrying hundreds of thousands of cars, every day.

Do you think the climate provisions are going to stop the M20 Cork-Limerick? By your logic it ought to, but you know it won't.

Same goes for the GRR, there will be a fudge, a trade-off, a few mitigations here, a few ameliorations there, maybe some eejit will buy carbon credits or something, but it will be built and you know it in places you don't talk about at parties.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119758421#Comment_119758421

Dacor is removing taxis from bus lanes even on the agenda?

I’ve been saying this for ages but I imagine the taxi industry will go bananas at this.

Is anyone actually pushing this?

Actually same question for ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras.

Edit:

sorry just realised the post was from October last year! Apologies in dragging that up!

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191682#Comment_120191682

All those roads were in a different era though.

It's like burning smokey coal, cutting turf, asbestos, lead in petrol. All phased out over time.

There will be no road.

Buying carbon credits to get it built LOL.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191682#Comment_120191682

A totally different generation seen the construction of M3 and M11. M20 might get built, at least there is an economic and safety argument t for it. Additional ring roads in Galway and Limerick are all but dead.

Larbre34

Isn't that interesting.

Why then did Micheál Lehane of RTÉ, report An Taoiseach's comments in respect of the GRR this morning as,

It remains Government policy to build that road, people can have different perspectives, but that the National Development Plan and the Programme for Government means that it will be built......

An Tánaiste backed up that position in a direct reply to Sean Canney TD in the Dáil.

Now, if I could just remember who Eamon Ryan's boss is again....

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192346#Comment_120192346

They can say what they like, its not them deciding it.

ABP now have to assess it against the CAP, which will likely kill it for good. In the event they approve it (extremely unlikely) it will be up to the courts to decide it following the challenges that will undoubtedly follow.

It will be open to anyone to make submissions or comments to the press, but ultimately it will be ABP or later on the courts, deciding it.

In any case, now that it has to overcome the CAP, we'll likely see a ABP decision in 2025 killing it for good

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191682#Comment_120191682

They tried that before in with the Galway bypass and the European courts finally put an end to it. It will be the same again this time if they are stupid enough to push that far. Sure what's another decade at this stage?

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191042#Comment_120191042

I’m not sure if this argument is an example of the hard-Green tendency of allowing perfect to be the enemy of good, or good old anti-environmentalist whataboutery, but it’s bogus either way. It is imperative for the future of our civilisation that we shift surface transportation away from consuming fossil fuels. Right now, we have all the manufacturing emissions downsides you mention plus consumption of fossil fuels for the vehicle’s lifetime, and motor vehicles are fairly inefficient users of a relatively dirty form of fuel.

Using electrical energy for transportation allows transportation to become carbon-free in use as more and more electricity production becomes carbon-free, and we are on our way to that - here’s the fuel-source mix for the Irish grid for the last month:

TnxM17

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191682#Comment_120191682

Same goes for the GRR, there will be a fudge, a trade-off, a few mitigations here, a few ameliorations there, maybe some eejit will buy carbon credits or something, but it will be built and you know it in places you don't talk about at parties.

I think the above quote from you is plausible, but it will be the GCRR that will get fudged for a smaller more purposeful scheme.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192692#Comment_120192692

That graph still shows ~50% fossil fuels, in a small island country with a lot of wind resource.

The problem though is global warming, not local warming and on a global level we are not on our way to it.

Last year we burned more coal than ever - globally.

~80% of our global energy comes from fossil fuels AFAIK.

Muahahaha

Cant see this road going ahead now its going to be tied up for several more years with ABP and then the court challenges which are likely to succeed coming after that. By the time all that rolls around we will have had 2 or 3 more years of bad news on climate change, carbon emissions targets missed, EU fines kicking in and so on. The political winds are shifting on new roads and this delay means it will be far harder to get it through.

Theyd be better off just pushing for a proper public transport plan now and getting that underway rather than wasting even more years on this road. But the problem is a majority of people in Galway seem to have tunnel vision about building this road, its become an obsession to many living there at this stage so no politician is going to say stop as theyll lose votes.

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192857#Comment_120192857

the problem is a majority of people in Galway seem to have tunnel vision about building this road

I wouldn't be so sure about that majority anymore.

15 years ago, sure, hell you'll even find posts from me in this thread supporting it and fuming when the original one was killed in 2013.

Since then I've educated myself

Same with many around Galway

I won't claim a majority though as neither supporters or opponents can without data to back that up.

One thing is for sure, there's a hell of a lot more opposition to it now than there was for the GCOB

The ecoablism is nauseating.

An aside- Why is the Galwegian works singled out for national attention? My guess is it has been a succes where the other anti-road (eg anti-M50) movements have failed.

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193063#Comment_120193063

The M50 is a failure. Decades of investment in metros instead would have left us in a much better place right now.

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192917#Comment_120192917

And I don't even think that people who are in favour of the Ring Road are opposed to some of the public transport/active travel schemes that are being put on the never-never. It's possible to be in favour of both.

Bus Lanes on the Dublin Road and the WDR are not to be done at the expense of the Ring Road, but rather as well as.

The problem is that the council are putting the Ring Road first, and seemingly refusing to do (almost) anything else in the meantime.

Larbre34

Isn't it interesting that the argument against here, is about an induced demand increase in greenhouse gas emissions from ICE vehicles, yet by the time this road is opened, ICE engines in new passenger and light commercial vehicles will no longer be available and will be an already diminishing presence in the national fleet.

And so, the real argument becomes about reducing extraneous multi-purpose traffic of every sort from Galway City Centre and suburbs, including that bound for Connemara and the west coast, to free up space for sustainable solutions in and around the City core.

If you don't think the Government who passed the climate legislation in the first place, isn't prepared to work around it to deliver the above scenario and deliver the NDP and GTS, you're very naive.

The climate parameters are entirely satisfiable and they will be.

TnxM17

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193147#Comment_120193147

Sure, won't we will all be in flying cars by the time its built.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193121#Comment_120193121

my trip to Rosslare via it from Athlone suggests otherwise. As does countless airport runs, Swords visits, Dublin visits, and the odd trip to Northern Ireland. One near miss with a boy racer blasting towards me on a blind bend the far side of (Trim? I forget) showed me the value of Dual Carriage, even if it's a longer distance.

and I'm talking about the prevention of sodturn. Prevention of the work getting done. This has occured for the past 30 odd years in Galway. It did not in Dublin.

so, again...Why is the Galwegian works singled out for national attention? My guess is it has been successful in preventing the works going ahead where the other anti-road (eg anti-M50) movements have failed.

Larbre34

But not flying 40 foot lorries and tipper trucks, eh boss?

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193147#Comment_120193147

to free up space for sustainable solutions in and around the City core

I seem to have to repeat this fairly regularly

There are no plans anywhere, by anyone, to reallocate any space once the ring road opens.

If there was such a plan, and it laid out in details how a huge load of space was going to be reallocated and it was scheduled to happen the day the ring road opened and it was set down in law so nobody could pull a fast one, was fully funded, planned & ready to go then you'd see a lot of resistance wither away.

As it stands, however, its very much a case of having the cake and eating it i.e. get the ring road and keep as much space for cars in the city as possible.

The argument that the ring road is needed to "free up space" is a blatant lie without any shred of evidence to back it up. Its the equivalent of "trust me bro"

and you're not fighting tooth & nail to get those plans in, even when a golden "you can get your tarma-Satan ONLY IF you include THIS" opportunity sits in front of you with the review?

Yeah......

waterwelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193194#Comment_120193194

It's been said already, moving 1 person in a 1 ton box measuring about 4m X 2m is not the way to go.

A full integrated public transport would be serving us much better now.

TnxM17

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193063#Comment_120193063

When planning permission was approved a few months ago that too got national attention.

Juran

People see the Galway ring road as a local bypass eg. knocknacarra to ballybrit. Its not, its also a critical.a bypass for thousands of people living in Connemara south (spiddal, cois fharraige, carraroe, letirmor, casla, rosmuc, carna) and Connemara north (clifden, maam, rounstone, ballyconneely, oughterard) to travel to east (athenry directiin), north east (tuam) and south of Galway (gort), as well as Dublin, Limerick, Sligo and the rest of the country. A big huge lake and river seperates west Galway from the rest of the country, and to pass this lake/river, all Galway west communters have to drive through the city, westside and QC bridge.

Same goes for holiday makers coming from Dublin, east of Galway, Cork, etc.. they all have to drive thru the city to get to Connemara/West.

Yes, the city needs city public transport for city and suburbs like knocknacarra, oranmore, etc.. but a ringroad would serve more than local traffic.

Unrealistic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193391#Comment_120193391

That also sounds intuitive and logical until you look at the Councils' own submission where it is made very clear that journeys between Connemara and points east of Galway city account for only 3% of journeys. The other 97% of journeys have a departure point, destination, or both, within Galway City.

So, while I feel for those taking part in those 3% of journeys, in the overall scheme of things those journeys are necessarily quite far down on the list of problems that need to be solved. Even the headline 3% makes no distinction between those who can time their journeys to avoid peak times, and thus aren't seriously inconvenienced by the status quo, and those who have no choice, which will be only a fraction of the 3%.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192856#Comment_120192856

Ah, it’s perfect-is-the-enemy-of-better, then.

I really don’t see your point. Transportation uses an enormous amount of fossil fuels, but electricity generation is moving away from fossil fuels. If you want to reduce fossil-fuel use, you must tackle three big areas: electricity generation, heat and transportation - these are the biggest users. Switching transport over to using electricity means that you now have only two sectors to clean up, and the electricity generation sector is composed of a small number of emitters, not the hundreds of thousands in transport or heating. Replacing fossil-fuels with electricity wherever possible is the enabler for reducing CO2 emissions. It’s no use having 100% renewable electricity if every house burns gas and every car burns petrol.

Maybe you’re misreading the word “transportation” as “cars”, but if I’d wanted to say “cars”, I would have written it. I mean electric public transportation, electric freight, and yes, electric private cars.

@Juran - if it were a bypass, it would have far fewer exits, maybe just four. This road is basically a collector-distributor, used for urban traffic from one area of Galway to another, like Cork’s N40, but at least N40 also carries cross-country traffic, something you can’t say for N6 here. This is not even disputed by the people who want to build it - the traffic surveys showed that less than 3% of journeys in the study area crossed the Corrib.

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193391#Comment_120193391

According to the planning documents, the % of traffic that you define equates to 3%

You don't spend 1 billion for an 18km road for 3% of demand

Not when 1 fifth of that spent on more sustainable options would free up far more capacity on the existing network

Larbre34

Trust me bro, is as good as you're gonna get.

FF and FG will agree to bulk up the sustainable commitments to get Ryan to roll over and that'll be the beginning of road space allocation.

But only if the GRR is allowed proceed.

There's more than one way to hold a hostage.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193347#Comment_120193347

So my experience is an abomination and I am utter scum for having it, as is everyone who does similar acts. Cool, cool….

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193623#Comment_120193623

Trust me bro, is as good as you're gonna get

Which is exactly why nobody believes a word of it