@kabakuyu "no doubt the Greens will be supporting the 31 property owners who face compulsory purchase orders"
The Bus Corridor includes 31 CPOs but zero homes. The Ring Road includes a few hundred CPOS with 54 families losing their homes among them. It's not really comparable, is it?
You've said it yourself, if you cannot change the 'shape' you reduce the mount of sand or change it's timing and if you cannot change where people live you have to facilitate and incentivse public transport, park and ride, work from home, staggered working/school times etc
Whether you accept the reality or not we are now decades down the line with tens of millions having been spent with nothing as the outcome and we are as far away now as ever.
Some solutions have to be found in the short term or as I said accept the mess and move the hell on.
@xckjoo "Don't think there's any truth to the people against the ring road not being from/living in Galway. You see the same couple of people trotting it out when they've no actual arguments in favor of the road to make. Plays on people's emotions and tribalism but doubt there's any truth to it."
Exactly, I had to laugh at the irony of some poster in Eddie Hoare's Twitter poll complaining that those voting 'no' had never driven through Galway when she herself was from 100km away. The reality is that there is a growing proportion of the population of Galway city and county who understand that the ring road will not improve congestion but just lead to a larger number of people stuck in the same congestion as today over a greater length of roadway. Many who have lived in other cities with well functioning public transport systems. Many who have visited cities where you are not relegated to the third class citizenship just because you are travelling outside of a car.
Is that the reason why? Surely the laden trucks are heading west, then take a wide right turn across four lanes, those walls are not in the way?
Perhaps, that was my guess as they're next to the traffic lights that I hear were being temporarily removed during the operation.
You sound pretty sure of yourself.
Green policies are now regarded in this Country as being associated with austerity, whether thats the ending of local peat sales, the piling of carbon taxes on top of already skyrocketing energy costs, or even today, where Hines Property are blaming Government sustainability targets for having to charge customers - and more importantly - low paid staff for Parking at Liffey Valley. That may not be true of course, but either way they are facing a boycott.
Its a massive fail for successive Governments, because to get anywhere, you have to bring people with you, you must have the carrot outweigh the stick.
I do care about species extinction, I do care about greenhouse gas emissions. But, I would have gone completely a different way about improving Ireland's position. I would have focussed entirely on greening energy generation 20 or 30 years ago and I would have front loaded serious investments in public transport before battering motorists and introducing absolutely s**t standard cycle facilities.
As former Labour TD Pat Rabbitte once remarked, the Irish electorate are switched on and they are merciless. You are convinced there is no regression on green policies that have been introduced in this and previous Dáils.
Let me ask you this. How are those water charges working out?
how many different route choices do dubliners have to cross the liffey or to go from north to south ? the city is a bottleneck because there is literally no other way to get from east to west or vice versa
How many routes do you need? If there's one that isn't filled with thousands of other people sitting in their own cars then why do you need more?
PT for trips within the city (or P&R if you're commuting from somewhere further out). Car for the trips you can't make by PT (e.g. rural->rural, tradesman, disability, etc.). The vast majority of trips fall into the first category so get those people using PT and then suddenly there's loads of road space for cars.
Taking those actions 20-30 years ago would have been very wise. They didn't happen though, even in the good times when money was rolling in, the governments at the time were only looking to the next reelection.
That opportunity is missed, what would you do from today's starting position?
Even if our inept local and national government can organise this public transport miracle across the city, we will still need a new bridge. Anyone who doesn't see that has blinkers on.
Why? There's loads of space on the current bridges if it wasn't for all the cars. If you can't see the issue there then you've the blinkers on and they're keeping you firmly focused on your car.
Would you take the bus on a daily basis if it was available? If not then what's your reasoning?
Galway City is forecast to hit 130k people (+48k) by 2040, never mind the surrounding commuter towns - no proper plans on how to move those people around
regarding galway's population:
"Population growth in Galway City Council’s administrative area was slower than any other local authority in the country"
"Even if" - If they're serious about sorting out public transport after the new road then why not make it part of the same project. Show us the details and extent of their ambition then get approval for both changes as an overall project. It might even balance the books to get past the Climate Action Plan.
Where to start?
Dublin is a city of 1.3m people whereas Galway has 80k and, covers only a fraction of the landmass Dublin does, so the number of crossings is not really a useful comparison. My point was about the percentage change, which is a more useful metric.
Over the period where Dublin saw a 48% decrease in private car traffic, but increases in numbers of people visiting the centre and increases in numbers living in the centre, it took the following measures:
Anyone who needs to drive into Dublin city centre can still do so, but many more choose not to than was previously the case, because other attractive options have been made available to them. So your statement that "nothing will remove the cars" is still incorrect. There are many steps that can be taken to reduce the number of private cars travelling on specific routes. Traffic evaporation is a well understood phenomenon at this stage. The flip side of that is that building a ring road will also not remove cars. Induced demand means that traffic will be back to square one in a very short period of time after a new road is opened. When the Quincentenary Bridge was opened it was hailed as the saviour of Galway traffic but it only took four short years before the newspaper articles appeared reporting that the traffic was as bad as it had ever been.
We will get confirmation in a couple of weeks, as we do multiple times each year, that the reduction in traffic that results from school mid-term breaks can free up Galway traffic. Stats published last week showed that Ireland has a car dependency rate of 76% compared to an EU average of 47%. Imagine the improvements we could see if our secondary school and older primary school students were mostly travelling by public transport, bike or on foot, as they are in most European cities.
Yes, this talk of huge population growth, yet AFAIK, there are very few live construction sites in the city?
Corrib Great Southern / Dawn Dairies / Connacht Laundry - all idle for years, other than demolition
East side of Eyre Square - no sign of any development
Sandy road - I haven't heard any updates?
Apt block on or near Dyke road car park on Headford road - any update?
doesn't answer my question
Didn't know I was here to answer your questions. Did you try Google? I've heard wondrous things. Probably a fad though.
Old Ballybane Rd. Rockland Avenue (albeit currently closed). At least 3 developments complete or near complete on the Coast Rd as well as the one at the Coast Rd/Dublin Rd junction. Large apartment block being built beside the Business school on the Prom (assume it's apartments anyway). Crown Square is well under way. That's all off the top of my head.
About one car bridge over the Liffey per 80,000 people living in Dublin by my quick count plus two train ones, one tram, three pedestrian.
theoretically what options are now open to the council if they wish to progress with the ring road ? If it’s re submitted to the board will it not have to be turned down because of the increase in emissions or could the board still grant permission?
Council are confident that the existing plan would still be approved.
The plan wasn't rejected, rather Bord planala accepted that they failed to take the carbon emission thing into consideration, so approval wasn't granted fairly. It is not the case that they changed their mind, and that the plan has failed
I really don’t know enough about the new climate act, but I’m struggling to see where the council is getting its confidence for it to be approved given their data show that emissions will increase.
What follows is a look at the proposed Park & Rides for Galway City as presented by GCC to Councilors recently. Various attachments referenced are included at the end of the post. Its a long post, but it condenses down nearly 50 pages of content from the NTA & GCC, so hopefully its of interest
First up, some bits from the NTA draft proposal for P&R's for Galway City.
To support sustainable growth in the regions, urban areas, and rural settlements through enhancing connectivity to high quality, accessible, low emission, and sustainable transport; empowering modal shift and increasing the catchment areas of existing and future public transport by delivering a network of appropriate Park and Ride facilities.
To maximise the opportunities provided by on-going investment in public transport infrastructure and services, particularly in relation to the commencement of service of new public transport projects.
There's a long LOOOOONG list of documents that call these out for Galway city, going back nearly 2 decades. I won't list them, but they cover several pages of the NTA document
The figures shown below are morning peak numbers only, not rush hour totals or AADT figures
To show why this is an issue, taking a quick look at the Claregalway (Loughgeorge) traffic counter on the TII site shows the following for that counter (note, I think they have North & South mixed up on their site)
So the 1390 figure they list is pretty much blown out of the water by 7am, with hourly figures of between 500-800 until about 7 in the evening. A weekday average traffic count for this location is going towards the city is just shy of 10,000 vehicles. Just to remind you, the P&R proposed is for 320 spaces and the bus service will only run to Parkmore. With such a limited size and scope for that location in particular, I can't see how this can ever be a high frequency service of the kind needed to entice users
The positives are
The negatives are
The 3 circled in green will be built in the short term (in GCC speak, this means a <10 year timeframe) with the Oranmore site seeing an extension to the existing carpark to double the size of it. Note the N83 (Tuam rd) site is only planned to have a bus service to and from Parkmore
The N59 has a site ready for the P&R but adding a bus lane complicates this one so its on a "longer" timeframe, see 10+ years
The R336 (Barna rd) and N84 (Headford rd) are listed as maybe, possibly, hopefully, being done under BusConnects despite there being nothing in BusConnects about these facilities
Looking at the N6 P&R facility first
Things to note
Next up, Claregalway
Lastly, Oranmore, no need to add a pic, they are just doubling the size of the existing facility. Has the same issues, even doubling it, it will still be undersized, there's no plans for secure bike storage and so on. Note this one doesn't come under the bus lanes as its served by rail only
Per the presentation
Honestly, I don't see these going into planning before 2024, possibly 2025. If the bus lanes are part of the applications you might be looking at 2026 or later with GCC having form for this, see the GTS which was released in 2016 and the first bus lane planning application was submitted just 4 weeks ago.
As an aside, I know I am critical here, but I think rightfully so. They have been talking about this since the mid 2000's and now what is proposed looks like the Salthill bike lane in nature i.e. designed in such a way as to fail before its even had a chance to be a success.
With just a little bit more ambition, this proposal could have been amazing.
It should also be noted, that without workplace parking levies or congestion charges, these will also face low user numbers. Carrot & stick and all that jazz
An excellent article covering the quashing of the planning permission for the ring road
thanks for that @Dades incredibly disappointing plan for park and ride.
Car park owner says cars are great and we need more roads
I assume you data could show that for every single road being built.
With this road, you need to look long term.
How do you improve public transport, in and around the city?
You take cars out.
How do you get cars out of the city?
You give them an alternative route to where they want to be.
Public transport can not, and does not serve all potential journeys. It is not feasible to have public transport that meets everyone's needs.
The best you can do, is provide an interlinked, reliable service that covers maybe 40% of all journeys, but closer to 70% of journeys to the city center.
A common journey that cannot be solves by public transport, is a family of 4, travelling from Claregalway to Pearse Stadium.
A family should be able to travel this 15km journey (approx) in less than 15minutes
A ringroad/outer bypass would make this more achievable
He's right you know
A genuine question, and again i don't have much knowledge of the climate act but can new roads be built that are compliant with the Climate act ?
I'm struggling to see how the family of four will be able to get into Pearse Stadium in 15 mins from Claregalway with the ring road in place, surely they will be a huge backlog off the ring road getting into Pearse Stadium ? especially with all the bus lanes that will be in place between the ring road and pearse stadium.
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