M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning approved]

OK we shall beg to differ, sadly as I am now well into retirement I won't likely see the outcome but there ya go.

No I am taking some data from searches and the updated search engines are now very AI oriented which I cannot help. I take other from various reports that I have access to and I am actually putting into a word doc before I post it. I am a bit old school but the world is moving on. And many others are posting here without showing the sources either. But if you see data that you believe is incorrect let me know. I don't think anything I posted about what has been done regarding public transport / active transport in Galway city is incorrect (I live in the city). I also think that the traffic count data I used is pretty accurate too, and the population data and vehicle numbers. I don't recall what other data could be wrong but happy to discuss and correct as needed. And I am not a snowflake but Ryan's article this week in the IT really set me off which explains my exuberant typing ;-)

No my commuting is done, I suffered over 30 years off to / from the western suburbs to the eastern industrial estates. I shudder to think of how many tonnes of exhaust fumes have been released on those roads in that time. As for the billion, the road would have been built for a fraction if we hadn't dithered for so long. Look at metro north another insanely delayed project. They could have built a spur from the airport and on to Swords to the Dart 20 years ago for a fraction of the cost.

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Using word as an intermediary doesn't negate text bombing with AI output. And just because Google incorporates AI front and centre now doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for the source of the data and trying to understand the purpose and nuance around it. You don't "think" any of it is wrong means by definition you don't know if it's right. That's the thing with AI. It's very good at giving you answers that look correct but lacks understanding and is sometimes completely wrong. It also gives reams of text so it's not easy to parse through as a human and extract the relevant information for an actual discussion.

You're missing the point if you think that adding the links Google gave you is providing a source. A source is where you yourself got the info from. So unless you're reading all the source material and understanding it, then you're only actual source is Googles AI.

Anyway, we'll leave it there. Not trying to pick apart you're posts. You do seem to be genuinely interested in discussing but your posts screamed of being ai driven to me so I instantly lost interest in engaging.

Have you seen the Barna to Rosamhil road R366 ? Its the busiest R (regional) road in Ireland, thats a documented fact. I dont have the data, but read it a number on times in Council statements about the ring road.

South Connemara: Population growing yearly, young people live at home, high level of employment, but most work in the city area, with majority going to East side to the factories .. twice a day.

Tourists going to Connemara North or South. Dubliners often said they'd come down for weekends only for having to cross the city, it eats into their limited time.

Barna /Fubro will soon be a townland equivalent to Oranmore or Loughrea.

Spiddal to Letermullen - Carna is currently limited to expansion on a bigger scale due to planning gaeltacht / gaelige rules, but that might be relaxed in the future.

Udaras na Gaeltachta have lots a old closed factories dotted across Connemara and have funds to support setting up new factories for start-ups and multinationals, but companies are reluctant to move West as they know employees wont cross the city. A high tech electronics company which had a fantastic facility with 300 employees, had to move to Parkmore a few years ago. I know a manager. One reason for the move, they couldnt get engineers, finance & supply chain skilled staff to apply due to the city traffic. Fact. The local who worked there had to now cross the city twice a day, or resign. And UnaG supported the set up to employ a certain % of gaeltacht people to stop them having to leave the area with the aim to keep gaeilge alive.

It sounds like we're broadly all now in agreement tbh. The worrisome things for me on this project have been the number of junctions proposed and the lack of progress on sustainable modes or distribution roads in the interim period. It really looks like they believe this road to be a silver-bullet solution to Galways transport issues, despite all evidence. It feels like someone political looked at the N40 and M50 and went "a big city should do this" and tasked numerous design teams with the technical effort, rather than starting by analysing the problems and ranking the solutions in priority order. And it feels like they want to use this to sprawl the city - "unlocking land" - rather than creating traffic movement for the existing city.

I really do think that many of the ordinary citizens of Galway believe this road will solve traffic issues for them.

Yep I fully agree.

Shades of Dunkettle Interchange about it, with people contacting me after it was completed asking "how come it didn't work, I'm still stuck in traffic?". Well… it did work actually, it just wasn't ever intended to solve the problems they thought it was!

Because the aim is to punish motorists not build infrastructure

Why?

It'll take 5 years from start to finish? What's that based on?

How about 3 years and save X million?