The councillors have voted to cancel the temporary cycleway plan. No amendment, just a full revoke.
Sets the project back years again, I hope those 13 councillors remove it from their election material before the next election.
As a Galwegian, Galway deserves the traffic it has. If trying something, even a watered down version of something is too scary, nothing will ever change in the town.
Why would they remove it??
According to the reports, they did exactly what the majority asked for
Great news. A victory for the majority over a loud and very vocal minority
Au contraire, this result is democracy in action. The idea was stupid and I said as much on the radio today.
Until the Ring Road is built, schemes such as this are pointless, a waste of money, and and never go8ng to work. You have to provide a viable alternative for traffic.
Some of the comments from the councillors beggars belief
Their biggest issue was in relation to the one-way section.
They were offered a way around it, i.e. remove that portion completely, that would allow the trial to proceed and not impact emergency services.
What did they do?
Say "nah, kill it"
As I said, this is local politics and sometimes the "watch the world burn" approach seems to be a very popular choice
Ah well, the battle is lost, but the war trundles on. Until next time.....
And there will be a next time, because this is not going to go away, its merely been delayed
There's nothing temporary in Ireland.
They're not going to spend millions to tear it all down in a few months. Calling it temporary is just a tactic to get people to accept it because anyone who doesn't accept it will have people like you asking why are they against something that's temporary. We saw during covid temporary measures that were made permanent.
Very small number in attendance at that event to support the cycle way. Few hundred? That's basically just people living in the immediate locality who want their own needs satisfied. Who can blame them sure, everyone is out for themselves at the end of the day but I'm sick of minorities basically closing up shop to their local area. It's like a form of NIMBYism.
They all seem to say they are in favor of a permanent cycleway but not this temporary one. Seems like an impossible task based on this outcome.
In other news
Friends of the Irish Environment granted a stay on any further works on the N6 Galway City Ring Road
FIE GIVEN STAY ON FURTHER WORKS ON GALWAY N6 RING-ROAD
High Court Justice Humphreys this morning granted a stay on any further works on the N6 Galway City Ring Road as he allowed a Judicial Review of the project by Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE].
Justice Humphreys also allowed FIE an additional Junior Counsel because of the ‘voluminous’ nature of the documentation.
The Review comes nine years after the previous ring road was quashed by the European Court of Justice on the grounds that it would result in the lasting and irreparable damage to the integrity of the protected natural habitats.
The new scheme was applied for in 2018 and granted permission by An Bord Pleanála in December 2021. Galway County Council estimates the road will take three years to construct at a cost of at least €600 million and would involve a number of tunnels, as well as a viaduct over the River Corrib, a designated European nature conservation site.
The challenge comes from the conservation charity Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), the group behind Climate Case Ireland. It is based on the failure of An Bord Pleanála to comply with the very significantly enhanced emissions reduction ambition adopted by the government in climate change legislation last year as well as the Habitats Directive.
FIE successfully had Ireland’s original National Mitigation Plan struck down by the Supreme Court in 2020 for being, according to the then Chief Justice Frank Clark, ‘excessively vague’.
Grounds for the legal challenge
FIE has told the High Court that An Bord Pleanála failed to act consistent with Ireland’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions as set out in the Climate & Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 and the Climate Action Plan 2021, and the clear commitments in national policy to invest heavily in modal shift away from roads and private cars, and towards public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure.
‘The answer to Galway traffic problems lie in proven measures, such as better public transport and the ongoing push for pedestrianisation and bicycles lanes – not in more and bigger roads,’ Helena Murphy if FIE said.
‘This project totally flies in the face of all of our environmental targets and undermines our compliance with the Habitats Directive as well as our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Developing roads in a climate crisis is just irrational, no matter how much one seeks to greenwash it.
'It is incredibly frustrating that groups like FIE have to resort to legal action to make bodies like An Bord Pleanála accountable to the law. These types of projects and developments divert investment away from the urgent investment we need to make in reducing our emissions and are self-evidently relics of the past fossil fuel era, and ones we should be urgently abandoning. The Welsh Government, for example, recently announced that it is to stop all new road building projects while it conducts a wide-ranging review in the face of our ever-deepening climate emergency.
'We need to heavily invest in encouraging and enabling safe cycling, efficient public transport, not more roads bringing ever more traffic and more sprawl that will lock-in more emissions.”
‘This project, which is acknowledged by An Bord Pleanála to lead to an increase in emissions which cannot be fully mitigated, is contrary to Ireland’s climate commitments under Irish and European law, as well as the 2015 Paris Agreement. An Bord Pleanála hasn’t yet looked up to see the climate catastrophe hurtling towards us.”
Other grounds in the challenge include Ireland’s failure to set site specific conservation objectives of European nature conservation sites, which meant that An Bord Pleanála could not have reached a valid determination that the proposed ring road would not have an adverse impact on sensitive habitats, and failure to comply with the European Union’s TEN-T Regulations in respect of climate change resilience.
Delays
Ms Murphy also criticised the delays in legal proceedings due to the insufficient number of Judges - ‘FIE is well aware of the impact of a legal challenge’s delay, but delays to large projects are not due to protestors, but to the failures by the Board and the lack of Judges in the High Court.’
'An Bord Pleanála reported that in 2021 it spent €8.2 million in legal costs (including almost €4 million paid to successful parties. Yet it has won just two of the 36 Strategic Infrastructure Development cases finalised to date', according to FIE.
FIE pointed out that in an interview with Parchment magazine, published by the Dublin Solicitors Bar Association in July 2021, Ms Justice Mary Irvine said the High Court was in “a desperate scenario” because of the shortages. Minister for Justice Heather Humphreys passed legislation last month which provided for five new High Court judges, and possibly six, and said it was “one of the largest increases in judges in recent memory”. However, this is eleven or twelve less than the seventeen Ms. Justice Mary Irvine said was required “to make a real difference.”
You have a misunderstanding about the point of a public consultation over design options. It's not a referendum, it was a feedback collection process with no controls around it.
Thousands were steered to the "neither" input by misinformation printed and put in letterboxes and online that that meant the exec would work on a new improved Option.
The vast vast majority of Ring Road consultation feedback was in opposition yet you support that going ahead?
Whoohoo, cancelled... sense prevailed.
Now put look to put a route where it services schools
The ring road won’t be built in my lifetime, and I’m hoping I’ve a long way to go yet!
it’ll be held up in red tape and courts for another decade, and is already seriously outdated, but that shouldn’t mean that everything else stops until then.
Some on here celebrating the cancelling of the cycle lanes, others embracing a stop, at least temporarily (10 years or more) on the GCRR…….. there are no winners in any of this, it’s just gonna lead to an even more depressing Galway in the immediate future, one where an inept city council will do nothing to improve the ever more slowing and choked traffic in and around the city.
Some say that measures like this cannot go ahead until the ring road is built.
Where will the people park when the ring road is built so? If anything people will be calling for more parking.
Lived in Galway for 25 years, nothing changes and all that's produced are plans, reports, risk assessments, consultations and false promises.
Delivering nothing and getting strangled in indecision is a choice.
Sorry but a vast vast majority of Glaswegians want the bypass... That is why the councillors are or it...
This was a crap plan and I and others have been telling you and others since the start...
The options where both anti Walkers and Swimmers... Didn't take into account the residents of Salthill who had a parking nightmare during COVID when parking was removed from the Prom...
But the big thing is nobody listened... Arrogance was the whole plans greatest weakness...
So run the trial cycle lane, and see how it works out.
Keeping things the same wont reveal anything.
Many residents of Salthill also want safe cycling on this route, it's not A vs B. Cyclists are motorists. Walkers are Salthill Sunday drivers and cyclists. Cyclists are blue badge holders and swimmers.
The coastal cycleway is in the city development plans, the councillors today are calling to progress the permanent cycleway instead.
By skipping the trial and going directly to the permanent solution we'll miss those valuable iterations that allow the design to work with the complexity of different users in real life scenarios.
I don't misunderstand anything. It was a fruitcake proposal foisted without due consideration on those most affected by it and they came out in numbers to have it - rightly - cancelled. As I said earlier today, there were 400 people at a car show in Galway yesterday, so there needs are no less important.
Great turnout at the car show too, what are their needs? I never said they were any less important.
Have you got a copy of this misinformation that was circulated?
Trying to put a cycle lane in one of the most popular places in Galway was not a well thought out idea.
It's already a safe place for walkers, swimmers, kids etc. Leave it be. The correct decision was made.
I say that as a cyclist and big supporter of the Greenway.
There is one winner - that is is the Galway City Council Executive. The Civil servants under the CEO Brendan McGrath. This has been there plan all along. A do nothing strategy to support the case for building the GCRR, which is the silver bullet strategy. No new bus lane or cycle lanes since 2014, last one was the Rahoon Road. Has been a reduction in overall bus lanes as some meters of it was removed from outside the Regional Garda Station opposite GMIT.
Imagine how silly and stupid it would be to suggest that nothing should be done now in the City for its car traffic mess because this Prom Cycleway is NOT going ahead. We need constant improvements to occur - big bang 1 billion euro project are a decade away.
I know you didn't - I was putting the numbers on the cycle into context, i.e. neither more nor less significant than many other interests.
The in-laws were showing me the letters they got in the letterbox, I'll see if they still have it.
Agreed. We need to work on a solution for all interests. At the moment cars have around 1000 parking spaces and dominate the traffic lanes. 0m of cycle lanes have been built in the city for years.
A temporary lane to try options on a route earmarked for a permanent greenway is such a tiny step, it should barely make the local papers.
Yet no public protests from the people who are against it.
Very strange that this isn't going ahead. Galway CC acting like they're running a small market town not a city.
I am very disappointed that the Galway City Councillors have voted against the cycle path. They went as far as dismissing the compromise motion of a shortened path put forward by Connolly.
These were the councillors that voted against the cycle path:
John Connolly
Clodagh Higgins
Peter Keane
Donal Lyons
Niall McNelis
Imelda byrne
Mike Cubbard
Frank Fahy
Alan Cheevers
Michael Crowe
Noel Larkin
Declan McDonnell
Terry OFlaherty
Eddie Hoare apparently took the night off but signed the proposal.
100% of the area is currently given to pedestrian paths, roads and parking with no compromise towards cycling. This story has made the national news. A 3km cycle path should not be making the national news. Instead, they have made Galway the laughing stock of the country. They have not had introduced any cycle paths to Galway City in over two years. This cycle path wasn't even a permanent fixture: It was a trial path to gather data on its feasibility. That already had funding secured.
Instead the councillors and the civil servants went with the lazy option of doing nothing and leaving everything as it is so not to ruffle any feathers. They they are lackies to the small number of locals and businesses that want to keep things as they are. A similar argument was made against changing the Spanish Arch from a car park into a public park back in the day. They didn't want to lose their parking. Or the pedestrianisation of Quay Street: they believed that the lack of traffic would mean less business.
This breed of councillors have no vision of what Galway can be. They voted to keep parking instead of better accessibility benefiting locals and visitors.
They wont be getting my vote in the next election.
I thought the shortened version was a good compromise from Mayor Connolly. It really should have been another option the "executive" should have given to the Cllr's
2 years? I think its 7 years now. Rahoon Road outbound cycle lane is the last one constructed.
I do not consider works like the Kirwin Roundabout conversion as a NEW Road or NEW Cycle Path or NEW Footpath. They are merely ties into the previous road layout.
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