M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

Padkir

kippy wrote: »

And again, you're very very light on specifics when challenged directly.

It took you this long to figure that out...

Iwannahurl

kippy wrote: »

And again, you're very very light on specifics when challenged directly.

...

I'm leaving this thread at this point.

Padkir wrote: »

It took you this long to figure that out...

Not much of a challenge, direct or indirect, from either of you.

And as for those who thank such posts, but haven't courage enough of their convictions to actually put them in writing, the least said the better perhaps...

veryangryman

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Not much of a challenge, direct or indirect, from either of you.

And as for those who thank such posts, but haven't courage enough of their convictions to actually put them in writing, the least said the better perhaps...

They could just agree? Maybe? No?

Schadenfreudia

veryangryman wrote: »

They could just agree? Maybe? No?

Yep. There is enough repetition in this thread without adding to it.

Seems I have to correct the same misinformation by certain people on a daily basis, no point making that hourly when others are doing the job so well.

Iwannahurl

veryangryman wrote: »

They could just agree? Maybe? No?

Hurlers on the ditch, I would say.

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Yep. There is enough repetition in this thread without adding to it.

You don't seem to have a problem with repeating your pet phrases wherever you find the opportunity.

Back on topic, sort of: a group of concerned residents was to meet the Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe this evening, but the meeting has been postponed until next week. According to Galway Bay FM, the Minister has previously said that he has no role in a decision in relation to the project. Which makes me wonder who does make the decisions.

monument wrote: »

A congestion charge is also highly unlikely to happen in a city the size of Galway and would have massive issues rolling one without alternatives in place first.

Now, this is a challenge. One of the few small cities with a congestion charge that I have been able to find is Znojmo in the Czech Republic.

The town of Znojmo levies a €1 toll for 24 hours of access to the town centre, plus a parking fee. Two toll machines have been installed near the entrance towers to the town walls, while residents and workers can buy an annual ticket. It is estimated that traffic levels in the town centre were reduced by two thirds following the implementation of the scheme.

http://www.its-toolkit.eu/2decide/toolkit/files/ITS_TOOLKIT_11_1314874486.pdf

Durham in the UK has had one for many years, but that's only on a single key route to a particular location, so I don't think it counts in the present context. Valletta in Malta (pop. < 7000) also has road pricing in place. Malta is not far behind Ireland in terms of car dependence.

Oxford doesn't have a congestion charge, afaik, but it has had what the EU Commission calls "30 years of car restraint":

The traffic restraint approach has proved very successful with city centre traffic levels having not increased over the last 30 years, whilst bus patronage has increased (the proportion of people using buses to enter the central area increased from 38% in 1991 to 53% in 2005), currently 15% of journeys to work by Oxford residents are made by bicycle and economic vitality has been preserved.

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/default/files/effects_of_sustainable_urban_mobility_plans.pdf

Sam Russell

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Oxford doesn't have a congestion charge, afaik, but it has had what the EU Commission calls "30 years of car restraint":

Oxford has very limited parking that is expensive, and most roads are lined with double yellow lines. Much of the parking is 'private' to the colleges. A significant bus only routes, and no through routes. And since the colleges own large tracts of land and intend to keep it that way, it is virtually impossible to get around except by bicycle which is what people do.

But they do have great bypasses.

Iwannahurl

Sam Russell wrote: »

But they do have great bypasses.

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the bypasses to get from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

Genuine question.

Sam Russell

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the bypasses to get from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

Genuine question.

I do not know. Oxford University is a huge generator of (bicycle) journeys, but Cowley is where Minis are built, and is quite industrialised. I would imagine London is also a great source of employment. They have the M40 and the A40 which are through routes, and round Oxford itself, they have a good ring road which is QDC.

They also have extensive park and ride services from around the ring road.

Maybe a good model for Galway.

Schadenfreudia

Sam Russell wrote: »

But they do have great bypasses.

And have had since the late 60s early 70s. They realised that to free up the centre you need a good motorway network in place first.

Sam Russell

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

And have had since the late 60s early 70s. They realised that to free up the centre you need a good motorway network in place first.

I think that the fact that the centre of Oxford is so much owned and controlled by the colleges that they had little choice as through routes were not available.

Iwannahurl

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

And have had since the late 60s early 70s. They realised that to free up the centre you need a good motorway network in place first.

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

Sam Russell

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

If the bypasses have been there since the seventies, there were a lot of workers at British Leyland who would have used them to get to work. Most use of the bypasses would, I imagine, have been people living around Oxford and commuting to London. Commuters who travel to Oxford University would not tend to use much of the bypass. There are a few major hospitals within the bypass as well. Heavy parking restrictions and the prevalence of park and ride has helped keep a lid on congestion.

The layout of the region around Oxford is not like Galway as Galway has the Corrib and Galway Bay to make route choice problematic, giving rise to East and West, there being no North. Planners giving unfettered permission to build housing to the west, while industry was developed in the east. There never was a general plan for Galway - it was always developer led. Infrastructure was not considered at any stage.

I think €500m is a huge amount of money to throw at this problem, with only a limited chance of it being THE solution.

Iwannahurl

Perhaps cities and towns in other countries only give us clues about possible solutions, not templates we can adapt.

Ireland has aped UK (and indeed US) car-dependent development for decades, even rehashing UK design manuals for use here, which we are still doing. All the same, many towns and cities in Britain have a better modal share for public transport, walking and cycling than we do.

In which case, Galway City has to work out its own salvation, according to our particular circumstances.

The east-west industrial-residential divide is one huge issue to be addressed. Another massive problem is the volume of traffic entering the city from "one-off" hacienda-land throughout the county and even further afield.

The traffic generated by such sprawl cannot be addressed by a "bypass" (as in Oxford, say) because the destination is the city. The core problem to be addressed is car dependence.

What did road-building ever do for car dependence?

Schadenfreudia

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

Yes. Of course. :rolleyes:

Schadenfreudia

Iwannahurl wrote: »

What did road-building ever do for car dependence?

That's like asking what did food ever do for obesity.

And as you don't like any of the examples cited from the US/UK as "templates" where do you think the "planners" have got is sussed? North Korea might be your choice of system by the sound of it!

Victor

Iwannahurl wrote: »

And as for those who thank such posts, but haven't courage enough of their convictions to actually put them in writing, the least said the better perhaps...

Constructive pots only please.

Moderator

Iwannahurl

Iwannahurl wrote: »

What did road-building ever do for car dependence?

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

That's like asking what did food ever do for obesity.

And your answer to my earlier question is...

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Yes. Of course.

Evidence please, that the commuters of Oxford are using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other.

MBSnr

^^^
I found this... I suppose you could add up what goes on the bypass and what goes via the city to compare.....
I haven't nor am I likely to...

http://www.dft.gov.uk/traffic-counts/cp.php?la=Oxfordshire

Iwannahurl

Likewise.

L1011

Asking for irrelevant "evidence" you know doesn't exist (because its nor something either easy or required to calculate) to try point score is pathetic

Aard

There are many dissimilarities between Oxford and Galway. It's important, of course, to compare towns/cities with each other and to learn from each other, but it's also important to know where to draw the line.

Schadenfreudia

Iwannahurl wrote: »

And your answer to my earlier question is...

Evidence please, that the commuters of Oxford are using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other.

I wasn't the person introduced Oxford into this discussion but, as it happens, I lived there (studying) for a year in the late 1980s.

The notion that anyway could believe, with the city centre largely car-restricted, people don't use the highway network all around Oxford to go between the various suburbs is simply not credible. .

If you want any more evidence I suggest you research it yourself. If I mentioned that the sun rises in the East and you asked me for "evidence please" I'd make the same suggestion.

If you have any serious issues/questions/points to make - that's fine. But I'm not going participate in a debate reduced to gibberish.

Iwannahurl

The context was that Oxfor has what the EC describes as "30 years of car restraint".

Which prompted this comment (excerpted):

Sam Russell wrote: »

But they do have great bypasses.

I asked:

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Are the resident commuters of Oxford using the bypasses to get from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other?

You then made this claim:

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Yes. Of course.

I asked for evidence that the residents of Oxford are using their supposed "bypasses" to travel from one side of the city to another which might make the case of Oxford somewhat more relevant to the Galway City situation.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Evidence please, that the commuters of Oxford are using the "bypasses" to travel from residential areas on one side of the city to employment areas on the other.

And you have no such evidence, despite having lived there for a year:

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

I wasn't the person introduced Oxford into this discussion but, as it happens, I lived there (studying) for a year in the late 1980s.

The notion that anyway could believe, with the city centre largely car-restricted, people don't use the highway network all around Oxford to go between the various suburbs is simply not credible. .

If you want any more evidence I suggest you research it yourself. If I mentioned that the sun rises in the East and you asked me for "evidence please" I'd make the same suggestion.

If you have any serious issues/questions/points to make - that's fine. But I'm not going participate in a debate reduced to gibberish.

Therefore we can draw no conclusion that Oxford's "bypasses" are a necessary precursor to their thirty years of car restraint. In other words, it may well be the case that car restraint doesn't necessarily require bypasses, which is directly relevant to the Galway situation, where part of the fanciful sales pitch is that a "bypass" will facilitate car restraint measures.

Car commuters in Galway don't want a "bypass" because they also want car restraint. They want a "bypass" because they want as few car restraints as possible. That is the crux of the argument.

Schadenfreudia

Iwannahurl wrote: »

And you have no such evidence, despite having lived there for a year:

In the light of my previous reply that is borderline trolling.

You have the traffic counts provided by someone else and simply responded by saying you'd no intention of doing the analysis that might answer your question.

So, my evidence is this: I used the orbital road/bypass network to travel between different parts of Oxford all the time, as did most of the people I met there who had cars - and that's nearly all of the non-visiting population.

My "commute" was from Summertown to the city centre and mostly I used the bus. I rarely brought the car into the centre for the commute; I always brought it in for shopping - or drove on the rings to a suburban shopping centre (same as I'd never drive into Dublin city centre being lucky enough to live near a Luas stop) - but would always drive for shopping purposes to a local SC.

Oxford would simply not work without its extensive ring road/bypass system. And it's not that much bigger than Galway.

Iwannahurl

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Oxford would simply not work without its extensive ring road/bypass system. And it's not that much bigger than Galway.

I haven't got time to do the web trawling necessary to acquire an up-to-date picture of the Oxford situation.

This EC publication from 2004 says that the ring roads predated the city-centre car restrictions (eg the closure of High Street to traffic) but that in the 1999-2000 period referred to traffic flow on the outer cordon was "largely unchanged" (in fact a 1.3% decrease) and there was a 12-16% increase in traffic on the "inner ring road". Other data reportedly "confirmed that the reduction in traffic flows in the central area was maintained without significant, unpredicted increases elsewhere."

This was all part of the Oxford Transport Strategy (OTS). Over a decade later, the road infrastructure around Oxford is under pressure, and the "bypasses" appear to be bringing cars into the city:

There are a large and growing number of people commuting by car into Oxford from beyond the city fringe (the big red 19000 arrow in the diagram below). We haven’t provided public transport of sufficient attractiveness to get people out of their cars. The consequence has been severe congestion on the outskirts of Oxford, on Botley Road and Abingdon Road, and around the hospital.

http://www.transportparadise.co.uk/2014/11/driving-into-oxford/

The latest draft OTS, which I simply can't read in detail just now even though it undoubtedly contains lots of interesting information, says that "travel by car remains the dominant form of transport to all destinations other than the city centre and that existing congestion [is] already requiring extensive engineering solutions to junctions on the ring-road."

The draft OTS 2015 also says that increased transportation capacity is needed, "but with space a key constraint, the on-going provision of more road space is not a long-term option."

The implication for a new OTS is that "high quality and integrated public transport is needed to support good connectivity across the city and to areas beyond traditional boundaries, [which] needs to be accompanied with measures to manage growth in demand for car travel."

The draft OTS therefore envisages Bus Rapid Transit as "the optimum solution for Oxford."

Where is the equivalent transport strategy for Galway? Nowhere -- it's not even mentioned in the brief.

Where are the €500 million proposals for BRT in Galway? Nowhere -- it's not even mentioned in the brief.

What we have are mendacious claims that a €500 million expressway for car commuters must be built first, so that car commuters will suddenly decide to switch to public transport. That's not a transport strategy, it's voodoo claptrap.

Schadenfreudia

"travel by car remains the dominant form of transport to all destinations other than the city centre"

Yep, that's exactly what I observed over a decade earlier, as I said. But Oxford is now growing rapidly, so it is hardly surprising traffic is increasing.

Thanks to the ring roads they have options; a package of measures which is likely to include improving the capacity of the orbitals/bypasses.

Galway needs to build that bypass quickly to make public transport solutions viable.

Iwannahurl

Iwannahurl wrote: »

What we have are mendacious claims that a €500 million expressway for car commuters must be built first, so that car commuters will suddenly decide to switch to public transport. That's not a transport strategy, it's voodoo claptrap.

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Galway needs to build that bypass quickly to make public transport solutions viable.

Viable for whom?

Who will use these "public transport solutions" once a €500 million expressway has been built?

Where will the money come from?

When will the "public transport solutions" appear?

Schadenfreudia

Every journey starts with a first step.....

Schadenfreudia

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Who will use these "public transport solutions" once a €500 million expressway has been built?

OK, so you don't believe in public transport solutions for Galway either? Nobody will use them? Figures...

Iwannahurl

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Every journey starts with a first step.....

Meaningless.

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

OK, so you don't believe in public transport solutions for Galway either? Nobody will use them? Figures...

Incorrect.