M6 GCRR - Are the alternatives a smarter choice

Starting this as an alternative place to discuss the myriad of topics coming out of the M6 GCRR thread as there is a large body of people both opposed and supporting it.

Seth Brundle

I wouldn't object to the road if I believed that it would improve the traffic issues facing Galway. However, the plan is effectively to build the road and do sod all else. This simply won't work. History has shown that building more roads does not improve traffic flows, it only encourages more traffic.

Also, given that there is a climate crisis, the lack of incentives to take public transport or active travel is an absolute shame and shows how we are being let down by GCC & the NTA. Making it easier for people to make unnecessary car journeys isn't the solution.

veryangryman

You know you've been on boards too long when this thread is respun. ARGH ARGH and triple ARGH!

We need Bounty Hunters to supervise the building of this road.

ben.schlomo

In before SeaSlacker tells us all that he's emigrating.

what_traffic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456489#Comment_118456489

I agree 100% with this. I am the same. If we seen in the GTS plans that vast amounts of City Centre would be re-purposed I would be in favor of this development. ARUP know this as well, the projections they set out for the City for Cycling and Public Transport no's for 2042 don't even match those for Dublin City right now. There no's show that that they 100% know, and at least they had the honesty to set them out in the planning document. The City Ring Road will follow the Induced Demand principle.

Why do people set out examples of Bearna to Oranmore OR vice versa?

Tiny % doing that.

Bearna to Galway City West is where the majority of trips are occurring. Oranmore to Galway East (Parmore/Mervue) Shorter distance, vast vast majority doing that in a car. Bus services from both towns is poor by European standards. Take out all those local trips under 5km and you free up the existing network. Can see it any times the Schools are closed. Apply same principle across City and the metro area. Some of the solutions are not even roads. There are no secondary schools in Bearna or Moycullen?

marno21

The plan is to build the road and sod all else because the agency in charge of driving the project have responsibility for the national road network and nothing else of relevance here.

Galway City Council and the NTA are in charge of PT and cycling infrastructure. Instead of giving out about the road, ask these agencies what’s holding up the work they’re responsible for? The CEO of Galway council was on Radio 1 in July 2018 and he said there would be a public consultation on BusConnects Galway in September 2018 and it would go to ABP in early 2019. No sign of that happening yet?

what_traffic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118460119#Comment_118460119

The agency "driving" the projects are Galway County and City Council, funding though is National (like everything else)

The N6 Ring Road is considered part of there Galway Transportation Strategy published in 2016 by Galway City Council which includes all modes of transport. It is all wrapped up together.

Agree they have been very very slow regarding other elements of the Galway Transportation Strategy.

That is part of there strategy in itself. They have done same in the past with other public transport infrastructure in Galway City like the Seamus Quirke Road/Bishop O Donnell Road bus when the "Original Bypass" was been worked on, they sat on that planning permission for 8 years from ABP.

marno21

Yes but TII are driving and funding the project at a national level, which in the context of getting things built in this country, is all that matters. If TII’s expedience was available for the PT projects maybe we may see some equity in delivery.

My main point is that the bypass and the other elements of the GTS are being driven by separate agencies at national level. They have completely separate budgets and both will be delivered independently of one another. The bypass is not being delivered at the expense of the other elements and cancelling the bypass will not see the other elements delivered more expeditiously

To be fair to GCC they have done a number of consultations, you may have missed them as they only get talked about on the Galway Traffic thread on the Galway forum

https://www.galwaycity.ie/maintenance-strategy-projects

?Cee?view

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456489#Comment_118456489

Do you feel your second sentence is honest? "...the plan is effectively to build the road and do sod all else".

https://www.galwaycity.ie/uploads/downloads/news_items/Traffic-Transport/GTS/GTS%20Executive%20Summary%20Report%20-%20English.pdf

The GTS is 600+ mil on the road (which won't fix the problem) and a handful of other measures that are the literal bare minimum they could get away, basically about 5% of the cost of the road is going towards every other measure. One example, the vast majority of the cycling actions involve signage to tell drivers there are also cyclists using the road.... like, seriously.

I'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetic

what_traffic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118460409#Comment_118460409

Do not disagree on the money - who holds the purse strings dictates, but how that money is spent can be influenced locally if the will is there.

Disagree though on the last line, and on the ground here we can see the results of this. Council have delayed doing anything for last 10 years, they do not want to diminish there case for the NEW distributor ring road around the City. So if you take away the NEW distributor ring road - it would certainly have made them deliver on public transport and other measures far far quicker these past years.

Example, in 2010; they submitted a proposal in the Dept of Env Smarter Travel City program to install cycle and bus facilitates along Western Distributor Road at a cost of 10million euros.

This is the part of Galway City with the highest population density of people living in the City (basically a 500m circle around Knocknacarra church has highest density) which has no dedicated bus infrastructure. Located on the Western Suburbs of the City

In 2022 - still nothing on the WDR apart from a few raised crossings at the Roundabouts. Probably have to wait another decade.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118461354#Comment_118461354

I do. The plans are optimistic and relatively light. I've seen so many plans over the years that I don't have much faith in them. They tend to be good for a PR photoshoot and then get ignored or watered down. In fairness, this particular strategy does lay out its loyalties early on...

Taking the section from their presentation, what I see for the majority of cycle paths is a white line on the road or where someone travelling on a bike is sharing bus lane space with other vehicles...

The rest of the above is effectively waffle used to pad out the boxes. The piece about allowing cyclists and motorists to mix safely was funny though - the authors obviously felt some humour was needed!

I've been reading plans drawn up by government bodies and county councils for decades and this is no different. No absolute definites in there. No commitments. No measurable targets.

• It mentions a "need to reduce the reliance on travel by private car" - what is the target here?
• How many parking spaces will be removed?
• How many new busses will there be?
• What are the public transport journey times and frequencies?
• How many bus lanes will be 24/7?

It also mentions the need to minimise the impact of congestion on galway City Ccentre. Honestly, "minimise"????

This plan is wishy washy and ticks a few green boxes without actually providing any substance. Regardless, it still doesn't justify a road which won't help Galway's traffic issues, nor will it contribute much towards tackling climate change.

KrisW1001

“A need to reduce the reliance on travel by private car”. I hope they didn’t pay a lot for that particular research outcome. Standing at the side of the Headford Road any weekday morning would tell you this.

If you want people to leave their cars at home, you have to give them a better, less stressful option. Public transport is that option (cycling has a lot of scope to increase, but it will never be the major transportation mode). I personally favour a carrot, rather than stick, approach to this, so I wouldn’t advocate any car parking reductions or price hikes until there was a genuine alternative: first, set up high-quality bus service on dedicated corridors with free P+R at peripheral locations, and only then start to charge more for city-centre parking, or replace more paid bays with disabled ones.

We look at continental cities and say, “oh, it’s different for them because...”, but it wasn’t. We’re just later to the game. In the 1960s, the centres of Munich or Amsterdam or all the other cities that are presented as models were clogged with private cars, just like Galway is now.

?Cee?view

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118462043#Comment_118462043

So there is a plan, you just don't like the plan.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118462552#Comment_118462552

There is a document. That is not a plan! It contains nothing of substance. No designs, no targets. Nothing quantifiable.

Aontachtoir

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118462541#Comment_118462541

This is completely correct. European cities slowly introduced better public transport infrastructure over decades, and (more importantly) they continued to develop their roads infrastructure to cope with changing traffic flows.

As for the carrot versus stick approach, one of the problems is that for at least some opponents of the road who post regularly on this forum the stick seems to be an end in itself. The righteous desire to punish people who dare to need a car to get around oozes from their comments, and can be seen clearly in their rejection of any proposed solution which might even indirectly make it easier for a busy, stressed Galwegian to get from A to B in their own car. For these posters, the only acceptable solution seems to be one where car drivers are measurably worse off after it is completed.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118462583#Comment_118462583

And if it met all of these undefineable criteria, you would just make up some more. It's a plan. Not a very detailed one, but one which clearly indicates that the local authorities and planning bodies recognise the importance of public transport and intend to work towards providing it alongside the ring road. It's hard to see how someone could look at this and still claim in good faith that the plan is to "build the road and do sod all else."

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118468956#Comment_118468956

As for the carrot versus stick approach, one of the problems is that for at least some opponents of the road who post regularly on this forum the stick seems to be an end in itself.

Taking cycling as one example, considering the stick is risking your life and what is being largely proposed is a carrot in the form of safe infrastructure, I don't think it's an unreasonable ask

what_traffic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118468956#Comment_118468956

If there is no detail how can you deduct that they place importance on it.

I do not see how that logic adds up as a local Galwegian who is living smack bang in the middle of all this car traffic.

A cool little vid shot in New York city showing how useful and capable cargo bikes can be. Just putting here for those who say you can't do X, Y or Z with a cargo bike. As it turns out, very often you can

https://youtu.be/fBK4RSZN1Do

Aontachtoir

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118469172#Comment_118469172

How much detail, specifically, do you want before you feel you can make that deduction? And why?

what_traffic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118471488#Comment_118471488

The same level of detail that we have for the ring road and a breakdown of money spent every year, that would be good for starters.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118471488#Comment_118471488

As a confident cyclist, I see nothing in their plan that would provide me with confidence that it will actually be done. It is a glorified version of what they've announced in the past so maybe some bits of it might be done. Wait till NIMBY residents associations, driving lobby groups, retailers, populist politicians and so on have their views taken into account and when the watered down version (aka lines of white paint) appears then I might be more confident that a plan will be followed. But based on experience in Ireland, I do not believe that the plan will provide safe infrastructure for children to cycle to school so (& I hope I'm wrong but IMO the plan will be a failure.

What is there in that plan that would inspire a person who would be less confident on two wheels to use their bike to commute? Will their trip be safe from close passes by drivers? What improvements in safety is there so that they can be quite confident that they won't get knocked down by a driver? Will parents let their child cycle to school?

TnxM17

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118468956#Comment_118468956

This is completely correct. European cities slowly introduced better public transport infrastructure over decades, and (more importantly) they continued to develop their roads infrastructure to cope with changing traffic flows

Why is it "more important" to continue to develop roads?

And you are probably correct that many European cities did develop their Public Transport 'slowly' - and developed their roads infrastructure, but have you any examples where that has been successful in “reducing the reliance on travel by private car” which was @KrisW1001 point?

CatInABox

As expected, a Judicial Review of this approval has been lodged.

https://twitter.com/paulinegalway/status/1490667901489225733