M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning approved]

It's not a bypass though. It's a ring road.

Also, weird post in general tbh. I don't think it's accurate to say that "people decided" what you're describing. And I'm not sure "People" in general prefer anything like what you're inferring. I hate driving in cities with good mass transport, it's a nightmare. I hate even being a taxi passenger in those cities. Your idea of a future transport system is very much in keeping with North American urban planning, where it's reasonably accurate, but not so much in other parts of the world. And I don't think your vision of a private vehicle coming from a more efficient storage space (this used to be my vision around a decade ago also!) survives peak time in dense urban areas.

I would have thought - I'm open to correction - that sprawl of urban areas is generally considered to be a busted flush nowadays, because the costs of servicing the larger area overwhelms the funding available.

Not sure any of this belongs on this thread though, other than to say once again, this isn't a bypass. They'd likely have called it a bypass if it was a bypass. Those added junctions were sprinkled in to raise the AADT and help the business justification thus making it a ring road.

I don't think that works though, are you suggesting that kids and elderly and infirm people will use these vehicles? I'm not sure that will be possible? Maybe you're just more optimistic than me here.

I'm in favour of a bypass and a distributor btw. I wish Galway was getting those. That's why I "jumped in" as you describe it. It's irritating to me that another "ring road" thing is planned.

There are men and women around the country doing their leaving cert this week who weren't born before this thread was started….

Thanks for these links. They are an interesting read and all well written.

Can you confirm that the paradigm shift you're describing is that autonomous on-demand vehicles could reduce the need to consider the congestion effects of the current private motorised vehicle fleet, and reduce the need for traditional mass transit?

I ask this because the first link you sent specifically describes the opposite: it calls out that there is a need to model the negative congestion effect of the rise of autonomous on-demand ride-sharing. It calls out only negative net effects of autonomous on-demand vehicles - problems to be overcome.

The second link you sent specifically describes the reduction of the private vehicle fleet and coincident rise of on-demand vehicle fleet but crucially also describes a predicted rise in micromobility and traditional mass transit.

And the final JSTOR link you sent specifically bounds its research as a congestion-free discussion again describing negative net effects of autonomous on-demand vehicles. Its conclusion is effectively that centralised control and management of such systems will be necessary in order to reduce net negative effects.

It seems to me as though these papers do not describe a paradigm shift in which we should need to reconsider modal shift efforts to-date, rather they all seem to reinforce the current modal shift efforts to some degree…what am I misunderstanding here, what are you inferring from these that I'm not?

my lady started the LC this morning and was one when the thread started….;-)

what’s sick about my youngest doing her leaving cert?

But the crap infrastructure, gridlock, and terrible public transport are the result of decades of car-dependent growth, the exact thing the Greens set about trying to fix.

Same with our energy prices, which are sky high because our electricity pricing is based on the cost of risky, unreliable, foreign fossil fuels, rather than our homegrown renewable energy (the Greens wanted to fix that, too).

This all belongs in a politics thread rather than infrastructure.

The greens got wiped out for multiple reasons, and one reason is that most other parties broadly co-opted many of the same sustainable transport policies as the Greens. It would be incorrect to assess that the greens got wiped out because the general public disagreed with them on transport.

I had much more written about how central government politicians are not just local lobby groups, but it doesn't belong in this forum. In short, a politicians job IS representation of the population, but that is not the same thing as achieving all of their desired outcomes. Politicians balance rule making, rule taking and even sometimes rule breaking (burning of British embassy in Dublin for instance). The idea that they simply fight to achieve every electorate desire is incorrect.

The onus is also on politicians to work with the electorate so that people understand why their desires can't be achieved. And it is in that space that most politicians (not just Ireland) are failing. Messaging from social media is generally "your desires should be fulfilled" and politicians struggle to explain why it's not possible. And many things are more urgent than transport infrastructure. Not enough money for disabled people, not enough childcare, not enough healthcare and so on.

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying I think you're insinuating that the general public are not in favour of sustainable transport, but the opposite is true. The majority of the general public are in favour of sustainable transport. The balancing act is between those who can be facilitated through active and mass transit versus those locked into car dependence.

But to repeat the top of this post: This all belongs in a politics thread rather than infrastructure.

When it comes to Galway, building the road AND having better transport isn't a runner. If the road is built with the associated costs then any serious public transport measures will be decades away.

The 'build the road first and then we look at PT after' mentality is doomed to fail.

That’s your opinion and respectfully I disagree with it not knowing anyone in Galway who agrees with this one or the other polarisation

The zero sum one or the other is often what people on internet (not from Galway!) present to argue their side but that’s not what people of Galway want or voted repeatedly for

The will of the people is there, political support is there, funding is there (yet another bumper tax report this week) the plans are there

What we got once again are a mix of local and Green numpties who are a very small minority abusing the legal system to block, delay and deflect

I have a vision of people like you sitting in Galway traffic in 15 years time shaking their fists in anger and blaming those bloody greens for the gridlock. Maybe another ring road will solve it at that stage.

And politicians are not elected to follow exactly what voters want. They are elected to do what's best for their constituents and the country as a whole. Populist politicians will always jump to the beat of their voters drum but If all elected representatives religiously followed voter sentiment we would probably have another outer M50 now and no Dart or Luas.