Sanity maybe? GLUAS rubbish rejected

ScumLord

unJustMary wrote: »

Ahh, but what comes first? Getting people out of their cars, or getting more buses?

HardyEustace wrote: »

Have to agree with previous poster. Yes, absolutely a nice to have.

However if you've a good bus service that you know will be every 15 minutes, it negates the need for it somewhat.

The bus service is never going to improve as long as the centre of Galway is jamed with cars. If I want to visit friends of mine out past westside I have to get caught up with traffic traying to get around town other parts of the city I have to drive through the middle of the city. You have to take people like that out of the centre to free up room or the buses will just get caught up in it. As well as that it would be easier to convince people to drop their cars at the ring road and uses buses into town after that.

padraig71

Those real-time information panels on bus shelters are not all they are cracked up to be. I have experience of them in London and Dublin. It can be really annoying when a bus you're expecting gets down to 2 mins or so and then simply disappears off the list, or gets stuck at 'due' and doesn't show up. Worse than useless when they get your hopes up only to dash them.

However, not to have bus shelters at all, particularly given the amount of rain we get here, is simply ridiculous.

unJustMary

dafunk wrote: »

Not true. A light rail system would totally work in Galway and in Europe alone there are five cities with a catchment population either smaller or the same size as Galway where a light rail system works and is cost effective.

Please name them, and give the land mass.

Or at least a reference to where we can read about 'em.

I do hope they've got a river in the middle of the city.

unJustMary

ScumLord wrote: »

The bus service is never going to improve as long as the centre of Galway is jamed with cars. If I want to visit friends of mine out past westside I have to get caught up with traffic traying to get around town other parts of the city I have to drive through the middle of the city. You have to take people like that out of the centre to free up room or the buses will just get caught up in it. As well as that it would be easier to convince people to drop their cars at the ring road and uses buses into town after that.

And that's exactly my point: they're not going to drop out of their cars unless the bus is better in some way. And if you take the traffic away (temporarily) by building more roads then taking the bus won't be better.

If there's a frequent bus service, then people will catch the bus instead of their cars, even if the bus needs to go through the same mess of traffic that their cars would have to.

IMHO a frequent service means enough buses in the system for a departure every 10 minutes in peak time after allowing for the longer-than-normal journey times (if a normal there-and-back trip takes 1 hour, schedule 1.5 hrs at peak and don't expect a given bus to be back to do it's next run before then). It also means buses equipped with communication technology (2-way radios of whatever), and a dispatcher who gives them instructions about what to do when unexpected things mess up the timetable and re-directs other buses to make up services that can't be run because people are caught up.



To me, it looks like Bothar na dTreabh is the ring road - except that someone forgot to tell the planners to stop approving building outside of it, and they forgot the link to avoid the Headford Rd. If they build another ring-road, won't we just have the same problem in 20-50 years time?

dafunk

unJustMary wrote: »

Please name them, and give the land mass.

Or at least a reference to where we can read about 'em.

I do hope they've got a river in the middle of the city.

I'll get back to you on that, I have a 300 page feasibility report somewhere in my office, it's just a matter of locating it. Made total sense to me when I read it a few years ago.