Getting around Galway

EV HUB official opening was in Westside today

https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2025/0627/1520694-ev-charging-galway/

I could be wrong but don't think they'll put in a bus lane without a planned bus route and that's a TFI decision. So bit of a chicken and egg thing or at least bureaucracy/different groups with different aims.

Not trying to say I don't agree but this is my take on the way of it

The red-tops (Galway Beo, Cork Beo et al) have dragged everyone else down a bit to get clicks.

Implications for the ring road after the A5 ruling last week.

RTE news : A5 ruling reverberates through Stormont and beyond

http://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2025/0629/1520831-a5-analysis/

Didn't they completely dig up that road last summer as part of the School Streets? Seems crazy they couldnt do it all at once?

The Council did the job as one go. Then Uisce Eireann dug it up again to do some pipe works. Then the Council was involved in reinstating it. (If my memory isn't failing me.)

A good article in the Advertiser by Peter Butler this week (Page 23).

Just letting people know that I'm not anti or pro ring road.

https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&pubid=a2fc81f2-0ccf-4dbf-aca1-00bedf4bde35

Seriously time that state funding for An Taisce is reviewed. It’s one thing promoting heritage but it’s a whole other thing actively campaigning against stating government policy

@Laviski

lets look at it, currently we have 4 road bridges of which only 3 are usable right now (o'brien's bridge is effectively a one way bridge due to pedestrianization) and in the future salmon weir bridge is going be bus only. So without the ring road we would be down to two bridges to cross a city…. madness.

And there we have it. The term 'car brain' made the headlines in the national media recently and generated much chatter about whether the concept really exists or not. That post is definitive proof that it does exist.

Having free flowing bus routes across the Salmon Weir Bridge is going to massively increase the capacity of that bridge to carry people from one side of the city to the other. Framing that as bringing us "down to two bridges to cross a city" betrays a massive blind spot to the idea of people moving around the city in anything other than a private car.

It's as if the 20% of Galway households that don't have access to a car don't exist for this poster. And that's before you take into account the many more who live in households with cars but don't have regular access to one themselves. Most of the 7000 secondary school kids in the city and a big chunk of the 25000 university students would fall into that category. And there are also the people who do have cars but who would opt to use buses if they became fast and reliable rather than having to sit in traffic.

To move people in a growing city you need to give them multiple viable transport options. Trying to keep the car as the only option condemns everyone to gridlock.

(edited as quote didn't show up initially)

everywhere in galway is dangerous for cycling as pi$s poor infrastructure if any!

1% is from the latest submission by the 2 Galway Councils to An Bord Pleanala (or whatever it is called now). It was 3% in the previous submission but they did a new survey for the latest submission.

i guess you didn't read the advertiser article from that group that i was referring to and only quoting a section. they happy for a bridge but not the bypass. Happy for a new road for parkmore but not a bypass…..

talk about Having their cake and eating it too….

I was taking issue with what you wrote, not what was in the article. You were the one who misrepresented a move to bus priority on the Salmon Weir Bridge as losing a bridge even though it will greatly increase capacity to move people across the city. You, and not the author of the article, displayed the narrowmindedness that cannot conceive of anyone moving around the city other than in a car.

I’m simply highlighting the bottlenecks and the consequences of certain actions, like pedestrianization. Right now, we have three functional bridges for cross-river traffic. One of them is earmarked to become a bus-only lane under BusConnects, but realistically, I don’t see that happening until a new bridge is built.

For the record, I’m not against existing pedestrianization or converting a bridge to a bus lane…far from it. In fact, I’d also support another dedicated bus lane over the Quincentennial Bridge, heading up Sean Mulvoy Road. But whatever route the service needs to be consistent and reliable. That doesn't mean buses every 10–15 minutes, just that people should be able to trust the service, seven days a week. That it will be there when they say it will, not early not late.

The real issue right now is that the smallest incident grinds the whole city to a halt. One minor accident and the entire traffic map lights up red—main roads, side roads, rat runs. When that happens, BusConnects won’t be immune either, assuming if it ever gets completed. Emergency response times suffer, and people try to move out of the way but often they don’t know how to react or simply can’t think logically in the moment.

The data collection and analysis details are all in the reports GCC have published but you'll have to look yourself. I've been through them too many times but I think it was fairly easily found. It's how Unrealistic described but no harm looking for yourself to get a better understanding of how they approached