M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

Ffs thats what everyone you keep calling a "degrowth green agenda agent" is saying needs to happen!

They need to redo their design because what they have right now will:

• Not Fix the traffic problem and instead make it worse
• Might not even pass ABP (2 years wasted)
• Very likely not pass JR (3-4 years wasted)

In which time they could instead accept the futility of putting forward something so shoddy, and design and propose a holistic project that:

• Builds an actual bypass with less junctions
• Remediates the existing N6 into a modern, useful distributor road
• Modifies the approach roads to the city centre so that more people can get in more efficiently (Public transport and Active transport measures)

Emden is an excellent example, actually, but all of them show better infrastructure than what is proposed for Galway.

This is the A31 in Emden:

Here’s B199, part of the Eastern leg of Flensburg’s bypass:

B200, the western leg of Flensburg’s bypass:

No shoulders, narrow median, 100km/h limit. Hmm…wie sagt man “2 plus 2” auf deutsch? Also, B199 has multiple at-grade junctions, complete with traffic lights.

Only A27 in Bremerhaven comes close to the specification proposed for Galway (2-lane motorway standard road), but that road also serves Cuxhaven (population 52,000) and, of course, it connects both towns with the city of Bremen (population 577,000), just 70 km away: Bremerhaven functions as a second port for Bremen (the clue is in the name). Of course, if Galway had a much bigger city 70km away and Galway was that major city’s main port, and it had another small city beyond it, then it might need a motorway too. But it doesn’t, it isn’t and it hasn’t, so it doesn’t.

The A31 Emden is what I think Galway actually needs as a “bypass”, although here that type of road would not be classified as a motorway, so no blue signs. Other than that it’s exactly what’s needed: a way for traffic that has no business in Galway to not have to go into Galway.

It’s worth comparing the two, to explain why I don’t agree with the GRR proposal. A31 in Emden also has only four junctions serving Emden, one of which is the terminus; the Galway Ring Road has seven - why so many? And the A31 is a 2+2, while the proposed Galway Ring Road is a motorway-spec dual carriageway, and much more expensive - why the need for so much more capacity?

The answer is that the proposed solution for Galway is the wrong kind of road, trying to do two jobs at once. It isn’t a bypass, it’s a collector/distributor, intented to facilitate more suburbs. More suburbs are fine, I’ve no objection to Galway growing either, but: all those new suburbs will be left with nothing except this road to connect them to the outside world, so eventually… traffic jams again.

The people who designed this road even say this in their submission: it will make traffic worse in the long term. Why should we waste money on something that won’t work.

Build a proper bypass road, and build a proper urban distributor (bus+bike lanes too), and retrofit bus/cycle lanes on the bypassed major roads inside the city. Don’t try and replicate other cities’ mistakes.

If you read literally every other thread in infrastructure it's fairly common for people to accept the good over the perfect, this is an example of the "perfect /good being the enemy of the bad" its a bad project because its designers say it will make things worse compared to not building it, that is a bad thing for Galway.

I suspect the NTA have enough on their plate with NGT, Bus Connects and light rail for Cork. They’re probably happy to put this on hold for a while to give themselves some breathing room and not have to deal with a council who are either petulant or firmly believe there is no way to build any PT infrastructure without this road existing first.