SQR Bus Lane

Chicken1

Heard on the radio this morning that the new bus lane on the SQR has now had two traffic calming insland placed on the bus lane near the left turn at Glen Dara, The City Council said they had to be put in for safety reasons. I saw them a while ago and the bus heading towards Knocknacarra now has to leave the bus lane and join the usual long line of traffic and re-join the bus lane after the traffic lights. Donal Lyons was fuming on the Keith Finnegan show with this new addition and adding further to the huge cost to this road.

What another cock up this is, the bus wont gain anytime now once it hits the rush hour traffic. :mad:

Seaneh

jesus stupidity knows no bounds in galway city council.

topcat77

I cycle that way every day. Now with the islands in place cars will edge out from Rahoon rd block the cycle lane and make it dangerous for the cyclist!!! Muppets!!!!!!!!

snubbleste

What's the "safety" reason?

biko

Yeah saw them putting them up as I drove past, stupid imo.

Little My

Sounds really ridiculous.

I have seen taxis, and been on buses, that seemed to be going way to fast on the bus lane. Also cars planning to turn left flying up the lane. However, the answer to that isn't islands on the bus lane.. it would just be to enforce speed limits!

Storm 10

Passed by a few minutes ago and a bus Eireann bus was trying to get off the bus lane into a line of traffic all the way down to Aldi, it completely defeats the what has been done there the bus will no longer be as fast as they were. Its crazy and the big question is how could this be allowed to happen..

yer man!

Would a speed ramp not have been a better option?

Iwannahurl

I saw that work in progress today and I couldn't work out what the objective was.

I thought it might have something to do with the ESB installation there, since there is a gap where the gate is.

galwaycyclist

Little My wrote: »

Sounds really ridiculous.

I have seen taxis, and been on buses, that seemed to be going way to fast on the bus lane. Also cars planning to turn left flying up the lane. However, the answer to that isn't islands on the bus lane.. it would just be to enforce speed limits!

At this point it might be useful to recall that only weeks ago Joe Tansey and Ciaran Hayes were succesful in arguing down an attempt to include a city-wide speed management strategy as part of the walking and cycling strategy.

Mr Tansey argued it would be "too onerous" to analyse the speed data.

Sponge Bob

Could they NOT put a speed bump in the westbound buslane either side of the ESB so that Buses are slowed down before the 2 left hand turns to Rahoon and Gleann Dara and WHY do they not make Gleann Dara LILO ( left in left out only) and allow them to use part of the buslane west to merge cleanly with a right filter off the Circular Road direction (as a bus westbound at the ESB would be on a RED at that precise moment anyway) ????

I assume nobody is responsible among the 'professionals' in the Corpo as usual????

snubbleste

Apparently a road safety audit was carried out by independent contractors to include a member of An Garda.
Traffic inbound from Knocknacarra, turning right onto ESB substation had to cross three outbound lanes of traffic and a cycle lane. This was deemed dangerous because of speeding issues which is why the traffic island is put there to 'close' one of the lanes.
Apparently this type of audit is carried out in 'phase 3' of a roads project and is completely normal. So the SQR is really only finished this month.

Joe Tansey also confirmed it is the Council's wish to remove that ESB substation junction and replace it with a new road at Bóthar Le Chéile/SQR junction - just as we suspected.

I listened back to the podcast of the show - how sad is that!

yer man!

Out of interest, if an emergency vehicle was to use the bus lane up to this point and merge back into normal traffic to continue forward, what would happen if traffic was bumper to bumper? would several cars have to pull into the intersection to make space to allow the emergency vehicle get around the obstruction? I haven't seen this now so I've no idea if this would be a problem.

Iwannahurl

snubbleste wrote: »

I listened back to the podcast of the show - how sad is that!

Irredeemably so.

snubbleste wrote: »

Apparently a road safety audit was carried out by independent contractors to include a member of An Garda.
Traffic inbound from Knocknacarra, turning right onto ESB substation had to cross three outbound lanes of traffic and a cycle lane. This was deemed dangerous because of speeding issues which is why the traffic island is put there to 'close' one of the lanes.
Apparently this type of audit is carried out in 'phase 3' of a roads project and is completely normal. So the SQR is really only finished this month.

Joe Tansey also confirmed it is the Council's wish to remove that ESB substation junction and replace it with a new road at Bóthar Le Chéile/SQR junction - just as we suspected.

The road safety audit refers to "lack of inter-visibility between westbound traffic on the Bishop O'Donnell bus lane and right-turning traffic onto the Rahoon Road".

The recommendation was to provide "a build-out on the westbound bus lane to force traffic therein to merge into the adjacent lane".

I hadn't spotted that previously.

Storm 10

yer man! wrote: »

Out of interest, if an emergency vehicle was to use the bus lane up to this point and merge back into normal traffic to continue forward, what would happen if traffic was bumper to bumper? would several cars have to pull into the intersection to make space to allow the emergency vehicle get around the obstruction? I haven't seen this now so I've no idea if this would be a problem.

Its retarded, if anything fair enough you have a bus lane but move the bus stops in closer to the pathway and give a space for a bus to pull in off the bus lane thereby allowing Ambulances/Gardai/Firefighters etc thru.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

yer man! wrote: »

Out of interest, if an emergency vehicle was to use the bus lane up to this point and merge back into normal traffic to continue forward, what would happen if traffic was bumper to bumper? would several cars have to pull into the intersection to make space to allow the emergency vehicle get around the obstruction? I haven't seen this now so I've no idea if this would be a problem.

There's a yellow box just where it begins so it shouldn't be much of a problem, likewise for buses.

Also, on an unrelated note, the reason there's 2 (making a presumption here) is because there's an entrance there to those big electrical tower things, which is why the island is broken up.