Galway traffic

Those new lights at the Menlo Park hotel will cause absolute chaos when traffic ramps up again in September. Crazy stuff, badly planned and designed.

Good question -- the traffic light sequences on my regular route never seem to change and the small cameras are always pointing the same way...I think your onto something

Light rail is for middle class people

Is there anything to be said for a monorail? I hear North Haverbrook have one and you never hear them complain about traffic

It will certainly be a challenge to get significant modal shift to walking and cycling but I wouldn't say it will never happen. Copenhagan, Oslo, Helsinki and Amsterdam all have to deal with climates that might be viewed as at least as challenging as Galway, some more so, but have all achieved significant increases in cycling modal share.

Low density is definitely a hurdle that has more significance in Galway but we're still a small city. Most of the city is still within 6km of the main secondary schools and if we could get a significant percentage of the secondary school students cycling to school that would eliminate a huge number of car journeys. This would be easier to achieve than a general modal shift because many parents, if they believed cycling was safe, would be happier not having to act as chauffeurs for those journeys, and many kids would value the extra independence it gives them.

The entrenched culture, both of the authorities and current drivers, is indeed a huge hurdle but culture can change (gradually). People grow older, and retire, young people who cycled to school will be more inclined to cycle to work. It's encouraging to see the changes that can happen when someone like Owen Keegan or Robert Burns get into senior positions in a Dublin local authority. Sure, not many people who live in Barna are going to be willing to cycle to Parkmore, but those who move into Augustine Hill and/or who work in Bonham Quay, are going to find the choosing not to drive a car on a daily basis is a much more realistic option.

Change will be slow but the momentum is there from other cities and countries and Galway won't be unaffected by that. Increased cycling and walking will happen here too but, as with many other things, Galway will be dragged along kicking and screaming and not, unfortunately, leading the way.

Perhaps Salthill is a lot closer to educational institutions (it even hosts one/two) and has a lot more rental housing occupied by people in education, and lacks public transport options?

My website gets regular queries from people looking for a bus between Salthill and NUIG, especially the north end of the campus. Whereas there's there's three city-bus-services from Knocknacarra to NUIG, and two go through to GMIT as well

Why not just install speed cameras with the existing speed limits?

It wont change much, seeing as they still have to keep 1 footpath on the salmon weir as its a protected view.

Desperate missed opportunity for a road bridge there instead to eliminate that bendy junction behind courthouse, and then pedestrianise the salmon weir bridge.

It's hardly going to make that much difference is it? Aren't they closing the road to general traffic and making it PT and local access only? If they are the volume of traffic going over it is going to be pretty low so bends and footpaths won't make too much difference

building a pedestrian bridge but yet still going to allow pedestrians use the other bridge, right - makes sense.

The plan is to make it local access, buses taxis etc, so low volume of vehicles going over so why build a new pedestrian bridge then?

Think it's only one footpath being kept and the paths are only wide enough for about 1.5 people anyway

When the Mary Elmes footbridge was built across the North Lee channel in Cork in 2019, the footpaths were left on the road bridges either side of it.

Presumably many people will decide to use this new footbridge instead, at least some of the time. I certainly will be. I suppose some will insist on using the existing bridge where it means saving about 30 seconds, depending on their route.

That said: If I were heading into the city centre from the University, I'd need to cross over by the Cathedral if I wanted to use this new bridge. As I recall, the nearest pedestrian crossing is back up the road, between the two University entrances. That might suit some people, but not me (if and when I get back to the office). So another pedestrian crossing may be required to complement the new bridge.

with the bridge gonna be made a bus lane only in both directions, why the need for the pedestrian bridge..... its just gonna be buses taxis and maybe local traffic if they are allowed. waste of money.

Then put the bridge traffic controlled allowing one way traffic for those that use bus lanes, example like the bridge in athenry.

cheaper than building a pedestrian bridge that will be half used.

There are solutions but a pedestrian bridge is not one of them.

exactly my point, if your gonna build a bridge it should be a road bridge and then pedestrianise salmon weir.

Why though? You haven't really given a good reason. And it would probably be a lot more expensive to build a new bridge for cars and buses than to build one for people

Oh right so. That's that explained. Clear as mud