M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning approved]

I struggle to see this happening. I mean I think most of us on here are irritated by the idea that nothing can happen until this one road is done but every project has some impact and some project must be first.

It could just be purely a legal thing: their legal team might simply have said the likelihood of winning on a point of law is minimal now.

It's such a strange attitude.

Imagine your job is to get this road built….and you know exactly what the challenge will be….and you decide the best course of action is to be bullish and hope the challenge goes away. And when that plan fails, your plan B is to be bullish about it and hope the challenge goes away.

Costs increase, the project is delayed, lots of people's time is wasted.

Maybe they were simply told that getting other GTS projects funded in parallel was a political non-runner. Too much state investment in one area…"balance" and all that

The M20, in stark contrast to the Galway application, has detailed and substantial public transport and active travel elements built into it. It also incorporates detailed goods transport hubs. If Galway had done this, the application would be much less vulnerable to challenge.

But it's not ancillary, it's integral. The M20 is going to have walking and cycling paths along most of the route. They're not expecting people to walk to cycle from Cork to Limerick, but if, for example, you live in Buttevant and work in Mallow, that's only 20 minutes or so on an e-bike and they are providing for that.

It will be a parallel cycling and walking path, of the type you see in countries like the Netherlands.

I really don't get the idea that a 'road development' should not consider all potential users of that road. There are already people travelling by bus and by bike on the N20. Surely a sensible approach is to consider how they will then use the M20. The fact that it also makes the application less vulnerable to legal challenge is then just an added bonus.

In a Galway context we're talking about building a new bridge over the Corrib but not allowing people walking or on bikes to use it. It would be relatively trivial to add some separate bike and walking paths separated from the road way, like Wolfe Tone Bridge on a grander scale. But that is not in the plans. So, someone who could potentially walk from Menlo to the new Bish location to get to school is instead going to have to be driven through town by his parents. And someone living in Bushy Park and working in Liosban is going to be denied the opportunity of switching to a congestion easing cycling option.

The current policy doesn't seem unreasonable though, our mode share (mostly in the urban areas) needs to change, so the roads design needs to change. New road projects need to assess how people without a car might travel on the corridor. Otherwise the roads budget continues effectively as a state subsidy to us who drive. We also want to incentivise the likes of me (who can) to convert to sustainable modes and get out of the way of those who can't.

I see it as being a bit like EIS to be honest, they don't need to deliver improvements for endangered species, but they shouldn't cause harm. Same with the mode shares in that they shouldn't necessarily improve the urban mode share, but if they're disimproving it then the project design is in question. Like you say, it's ancillary to the road, but it's a necessary evil. Like making sure public buildings are accessible for people with mobility impairments.

Roads projects won't need to necessarily deliver a new rail line, for instance look at the M20 where the rail connectivity was a list of proposed/committed IÉ projects on the corridor. But the rail projects were listed and quantified, and that's an area where the M20 project team methodology differed hugely from the Galway Ring Road one. Imagine if the M20 team simply said "rail needs on the corridor will be dealt with by IÉ's projects" and left it at that! It's been chalk and cheese between the two.

It's the city Council i was referring to, not particulars to the plan itself. No leadership or foresight. A cycle lane can be done. If loss of some car parking cant be accepted then almost no urban cycleways would be built anywhere.

Here is your original statement..."Why invest in something that has been shown to make things worse"

So you've no examples of any roads that have made things worse. You're speculating that this road 'might' make things worse, based on what exactly? Your own opinion seemingly. Nothing whatsoever has been shown yet to make things worse

As a country there's exceptionally few investments in roads that we as a populace have regretted making