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Galway roundabouts set for upgrades
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galwayroads wrote: »Why do you keep going on about buses being the answer to galways traffic problems? The only ones who can even avail of buses are the ones who happen to live on the bus route to their workplace (and many of these will still take their car instead). Everyone else in the city has to drive. Everyone coming in from outside the city has to drive.
Replacing roundabouts with junctions is not going to see a huge shift from cars to buses. It will have basically no effect as people have to drive to get to work.
Load of bull
have you heard of car pooling, also there are bus routes (both public and private) that originate outside the city, some of them even use the soon to be upgraded Briarhill junction.
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Load of bull
have you heard of car pooling, also there are bus routes (both public and private) that originate outside the city, some of them even use the soon to be upgraded Briarhill junction.
Car pooling is very limited imo. People need to be leaving for work at the same time and coming home at the same time, working in the same place or on the same route living near to each other etc and to be honest I have no problem travelling with close friends or family members but I have no time for forced conversations every morning and evening with people I dont really know who would be travelling with me in a car pool situation.
Buses into the city are pointless unless you live on the main road or very close to it and need to go at the exact time in the morning and evening the bus goes and work near where the bus drops you off. Why would anybody but themselves through using one of these buses unless it suited perfectly.0 -
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antoobrien wrote: »As somebody who cycled that route for several years when going to the uni I have one thing to say to that:
You're plain lazy
There's nothing wrong with the vast majority of the roads in the area for cycling. This thing about cycling safety appears to be from people that do not cycle. I used the roundabouts for over 10 years when cycling to work college and town and had 1 incident at a roundabout (which would still have happened if I was in a car).
My advice: go borrow a bike and cycle for a few days. Make sure you've no headphones on ( and no book on the handlebars) and keep your head up, you'll be fine. See how it goes. Then if you find it unsafe come back on here and complain.
No I'm not lazy. I've cycled for most of my life. I'm from Holland, I know how to cycle.
I've just seen too many people getting knocked down here. And it's not their fault. Roundabouts here don't have a safe place for cyclists. Cycle lanes, if they are present, are not linked (and sometimes have poles for traffic signs right in the middle of them). Motorists aren't very aware of bikes e.g. when turning (probably because there's so few of them).
Perhaps when the SQR upgrade is finished it'll be a bit better but I'm not going to go round a roundabout amidst the cars. I'll never feel safe doing that, not on big roundabouts like these.
However if they were signalised junctions with separate lights for bikes / pedestrians or would have cycle lanes around the roundabout, I probably would cycle to work. I'd have to get a bike from Holland though because I hate the low handlebars on the bikes here I prefer sitting up straight on a bike. 0 -
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antoobrien wrote: »
[...]
Anyhow everything went well until I got home and notice the shed was open and my 1 month old bike that cost me €400+ was missing.
If I hadn't used PT yesterday I would have been cycling and my bike wouldn't have been stolen.
[...]
So can we cut all the crap and get down to some facts please.
In a nutsehell these are the major contributory factors to Galway's traffic problems:
Galway's population city and county - is growing faster than all our infrastructure can handle (and has been growing at a rate of 13% per census cycle since the 50s
Galway is the economic hub of the entire county
There's poor PT in Galway county causing a great many of them to have to drive
When entering Galway city from the east drivers are shunted along a route that leads them inexorably to Galways version of the Bermuda triangle (moneen to terryland to headford road)
Congestion is not caused by single occupancy etc - it's caused by too many vehicles trying to access a location at the same time. Single occupancy is merely a contributory factor. You can bring out statistics about single occupancy, car pool schemes or whatever you like but it's often necessary for people to drive on their own in cars for various reasons (including personal safety, unavailability or non-practicality of available pt solutions (e.g. having to take two buses taking over an hour to cross town vs 25 minutes in your own car), people living in a house together not traveling the same direction to work, school, college etc, etc etc ad nauseum) - none of which are deemed valid by the PT enthusiasts (I have a less flattering word in mind) on here but are the very reasons that people don't use or trust PT.
Oh and for those who think a direct knocknarcara to ballybrit/parkmore bus route is practical - there are too many dead spots along the N6 that no passengers could access a bus stop, making it a revenue black hole - which BE will never go for. They've to support regional services to connemara etc, so they're not going to take on a loss leader in a major urban area as well. Any new routes will have to be at least revenue netural to justify their existence and realistically given the financial situation turn a significant profit.
The reason the #9 is so successful is not because it visits Parkmore, it's because it goes through Doughiska. I can't tell you how many times I've been on this bus, which was full leaving eyre square, and been either on my own or with only 2/3 other people by the time we get to Western Motors.
Having your bike stolen is a painful thing -- my sympathies.
Now, you make four statements about Galway City regarding its traffic and transportation problems, as if these were sufficient in themselves to explain the whole story. I suspect the situation is more ramified than you seem to imply.
My summary of your four main points (which you have also referred to elsewhere in this thread, IIRC):
1. Population grew faster than infrastructure
2. Galway City is an important regional hub
3. Public transport in County Galway is inadequate
4. Traffic travelling East>West is held up by a major bottleneck.
Reading those, I think I hear a familiar chord being played in the background: GCOB.
You also make a fifth statement closely related to the above: "[traffic] congestion is ... caused by too many vehicles trying to access a location at the same time." This to my mind is about as satisfactory an explanation as concluding that the cause of heavy rain (or flooding, perhaps) is lots of water drops falling out of the sky at the same time. It's just begging the question, IMO.
While attempts can be made to model and predict traffic congestion, ultimately it is not a natural phenomenon.
It is not inevitable, it is not ordained by God and it is not sustainably solvable by supply-side measures (eg more roads, more lanes, larger roundabouts).
It is manifestly untenable IMO to suggest that there is no major causal relationship between the prevalence of single-occupant car use and traffic congestion.
Firstly, cars take up a large amount of road space (nearly 90% of it) and in a single-occupant car most of that space is wasted since it is being used by a vehicle not by a person. The higher the car occupancy the lower the impact per person of using the car.
By way of contrast, the road space occupied by a passenger in a bus is approximately one thirtieth that of a person in a car.
Incidentally, larger cars take up more road space than smaller cars. That's a no-brainer, of course, but then it should be equally obvious that even if it's "often necessary for people to drive on their own in cars" there is absolutely no compelling reason for all of them to use a car with a larger footprint (either in terms of size or ecological impact). It has long been recognised, for example, that switching to smaller cars could free up as much as 8% of road space on freeways.
According to Goodbody Economic Consultants (2000) “the level of car ownership is the single most important determinant of travel demand”. More than ten years ago, private cars accounted for almost 80% of road vehicle kilometres, and were thus “the main determinant of increases in road traffic volumes”. Goodbody also pointed out that increases in car ownership “tend to reduce use of sustainable transport modes, including public transport”. At that stage, well before the peak Celtic Casino years, the private car accounted for 87 per cent of all travel, and was “tending to increase its share”.
Since private car use still dominates, and 9 out of 10 car users commute alone to work (according to the CSO) it is a physical impossibility that Single Occupant Vehicles (SOVs) do not make a major – THE major – contribution to traffic congestion in Galway City.
Claiming that “population grew faster than infrastructure” and therefore, per se, contributed to traffic congestion ignores the fact that a large proportion of that population growth in the city occurred within relatively short distances of work or education yet, for example, 61% of trips to work were still made by car (Source: Galway City Council Smarter Travel bid).In 2006, in Galway City, 50028 people travelled to work or education compared to the 2002 figure of 46,598. The majority of people (51.6%) travel a distance of 4 kilometres or under and can be further split to 17.5% travelling less than 1km and 34.1% travelling 2-4 kilometres. This figure is more than 20 percentage points higher than corresponding figures for the country as a whole (31.2%) and the west region (31.6%), indicating that many people live in close proximity to their work/education. (Source: Galway City Atlas 2008/2009)Galway City is indeed an important regional hub, but that still does not explain why so much unnecessary car use occurs. The Goodbody Report referred to above had this to say about traffic into “regional hubs”:The analysis of road travel showed that the very high traffic volumes are observed in the approaches to the major cities. It is also clear that the vast bulk of this traffic is generated in the hinterland of these cities and that the contribution of long distance inter-urban traffic to urban congestion is relatively low.I have found no evidence to suggest that this situation has changed greatly in recent years. Traffic generation in the hinterland of Galway City is not caused by a lack of infrastructure. IMO it is due to a combination of factors: possible causes include car dependence created by bad “planning” (especially the high incidence of one-off house building), unsustainable public policies (eg inadequate controls on “planning”, developer-led “planning”, misguided fiscal policies, poor local government), economic factors and personal choices in relation to home location.
The inevitably poor public transport in county areas with a low population density may lead to car dependence, but should that determine how people use their cars within the city itself? It is not feasible to try to cater for future growth in car use by merely building more roads. Sooner or later supply-side measures will prove inadequate, and interventions to control demand will be needed:Travel Demand Management (TDM), is the application of strategies and policies to reduce travel demand (specifically that of single-occupancy private vehicles), or to redistribute this demand in space or in time.Though careful study would be needed to determine whether and how a Congestion Charge might work in Galway City, I think it’s time we considered such a move. If implemented along with improved bus services as well as Park & Ride, there could be major social, economic and environmental benefits for all citizens, including those who continue to drive out of necessity or choice. For example, the city of Stockholm introduced a congestion charge and related measures in 2006, and an evaluation of the strategy showed that traffic volumes were reduced ~20%, waiting times for motorists decreased 30-50% and inner city CO2 emissions decreased by 14%.
As the UK Government concluded in its 2004 White Paper, The Future of Transport: A Network for 2030, “we cannot simply build our way out of the problems we face. It would be environmentally irresponsible – and would not work. So we must make our existing transport networks work more efficiently”.
In short, resource pressures – a stable climate also being a resource – point us to reduce the demand to travel in single-occupant private vehicles. This reduction would be taken up by increases in public transport, walking, cycling and contact using the internet – all of which use less energy and demand less space. TDM can also redistribute demand over time, thereby reducing congestion, and over space, (redirecting through traffic away from town centres using charges, for example).
Here are a couple of videos, essentially ads for IBM, describing the “Stockholm Trial” and its benefits:
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![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQ8EH5HewM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfMylzF4lv8
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