Council to ban cars from O'Briens & Salmon Weir bridge, and 7 streets

flazio

topcat77

I'm really surprised by the forward thinking that is being shown in the document. We need to be less reliant on personal transport and embrace public transport to the benefit of all. I know the plan has some points that are questionable but it's a document to generate response and discussion on the best way to bring Galway forward. Public transport in Galway will only get better when more people use it.

cgcsb

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

And why put people through all that hardship when there is the far far superior option of using a car and allowing cars full access to the city (bar a very limited number of areas where is makes sense to be pedestrian only like shop street).

It's like going back to using square wheels after round ones were invented.

A) we have a problem with congestion
we have a problem with emissions
C) we have a problem with inefficient land use which causes severe damage to the natural environment.
D) We have a poor pedestrian environment because of congestion

flazio

flazio wrote: »

So what? People don't care about that silly graphic a few people keep posting. Cars are the modern way of travelling and are far superior to the alternatives.

cgcsb wrote: »

A) we have a problem with congestion
we have a problem with emissions
C) we have a problem with inefficient land use which causes severe damage to the natural environment.
D) We have a poor pedestrian environment because of congestion

A) Build more road capacity, the bypass in particular with will massively improve city centre traffic
Cars are becoming more and more efficient, busses are one of the worst polluting vehicles on the road...bad comparison. People right to person transport trumps it anyway.
C) who cares, people need to use their cars it's more important.
D) nonsense, walking around the city is very easy. In fact congestion makes it easier for pedestrians free moving traffic makes it more difficult.

cgcsb

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

So what? People don't care about that silly graphic a few people keep posting. Cars are the modern way of travelling and are far superior to the alternatives.

In the 1970s perhaps but it's 2016 and we've matured as a society.

cgcsb

cgcsb wrote: »

In the 1970s perhaps but it's 2016 and we've matured as a society.

No a tiny few hippy environmentalist anti-car people have started to shout very loud. The vast vast majority of society sees cars as the best way to travel by a distance. How can you be happy stuck using a bus, walking to a bus stop in the rain, waiting at a bus stop, sitting beside other people, stuck to the bus time table, stuck to bus routes, having to carry your stuff around thus possibly injuring yourself etc etc when you can hop in the car outside the door and travel in comfort and style to your destination and look up at the depressed heads packed into a smelly bus.

Of course this is without even mentioning the large number of people living outside the city where cars will always be an absolute necessity and they need to be able to travel into the city to their destinations unhindered by crazy road closures. Then there is the elderly and disabled as others have said who need to be dropped right at their destination.

There are positives here for motorists possibly.

More effective public transport could move some people from their cars.

Less cars on the road would mean less congestion for the remaining motorists, easier parking, more reliable journey times.

Moneenageisha to the bottom of Threadneedle road is 5.3 km via Wolfe Tone bridge, 5.6 via the Salmon weir and 5.8 via the QCB.

It isn't much of a difference and all carparks will still be accessible.

timmyntc

The galway bypass alone won't fix the traffic problem. You're incredibly naive if you think it will.
Once the bypass is built, sure, some people will use it to avoid the congestion in city centre. eventually that congestion will begin to dissipate. Then people will realise city centre traffic is grand, and its quicker to drive straight through the city than around the city via the bypass, and the traffic problems begin again.

You have to put some restrictions in place, and make higher density transport (i.e. public transport/car pooling) more desirable.
If you build more roads and do nothing else, all you're doing is encouraging people to use cars. Which will leave you with an even worse problem down the line. Its that kind of short sightedness that has left us here in the first place. The solution is most definitely not 'build more roads where people want to go', I mean where do you think people want to go that there are no roads?

And as for people having 'worked really hard' and feeling entitled to use their car, so what? If someone worked hard to get his pilots license does that mean he can fly his helicopter wherever he wants?

I hope that short-sighted thinking doesn't prevail on this one, otherwise you are dooming Galway city to a future of eternal congestion, and in 20 years time there will be plans for another bypass to go over the city or under or something since City center traffic will still be a nightmare.

cgcsb

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

No a tiny few hippy environmentalist anti-car people have started to shout very loud. The vast vast majority of society sees cars as the best way to travel by a distance. How can you be happy stuck using a bus, walking to a bus stop in the rain, waiting at a bus stop, sitting beside other people, stuck to the bus time table, stuck to bus routes, having to carry your stuff around thus possibly injuring yourself etc etc when you can hop in the car outside the door and travel in comfort and style to your destination and look up at the depressed heads packed into a smelly bus.

Of course this is without even mentioning the large number of people living outside the city where cars will always be an absolute necessity and they need to be able to travel into the city to their destinations unhindered by crazy road closures. Then there is the elderly and disabled as others have said who need to be dropped right at their destination.

It's the modern city, it's not just about Galway it's national transport policy to cut down on car usage for the reasons I mentioned before, particularly in urban areas where alternatives can easily be provided. It may inconvenience people who have notions or superiority complexes but ultimately it's the best move for society and the environment as a whole and it'll mean less Kyoto fines for the tax payer.

Mrs OBumble

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

No a tiny few hippy environmentalist anti-car people have started to shout very loud. The vast vast majority of society sees cars as the best way to travel by a distance. How can you be happy stuck using a bus, walking to a bus stop in the rain, waiting at a bus stop, sitting beside other people, stuck to the bus time table, stuck to bus routes, having to carry your stuff around thus possibly injuring yourself etc etc when you can hop in the car outside the door and travel in comfort and style to your destination and look up at the depressed heads packed into a smelly bus.

So many things I could say. Will limit myself to:

1 Sitting beside other people? Ahh, horror!

2 Do you have any injury statistics for private cars vs buses?

3 I owned a car for approx 20 years. For the last 10-ish, I've rented a car when I need one, and used public transport other times - including taxis. Manic drivers, parking, breakdowns / vandalism /maintenance, NCT, car-tax - are all someone else's problem. My life is considerably less stressful and I'm financially a lot better off, with only a few curbs on my freedom. And when I do drive, it's typically a very late model, low mileage car with features I could never afford to buy (the last one even sensed when it was raining and turned the windscreen wipers on for me!). Trust me, I'm happier this way.



Back on the topic of this thread: thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Please make sure you share them with the city council, too. Submissions close next Monday, 11 July. The address is in the flyer linked to from the first post.

flazio

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

So what? People don't care about that silly graphic a few people keep posting. Cars are the modern way of travelling and are far superior to the alternatives.

And you can speak for all people can you?

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

Cars are becoming more and more efficient, busses are one of the worst polluting vehicles on the road...bad comparison. People right to person transport trumps it anyway.

As the cars are getting more efficient, so are the busses and the trains. Look at how we can get around the country in carriages with little engines underneath instead of one massive engine at the front or back. Besides one bus with 20 people will always be less polluting then 20 cars with one person per car. If your worried about sharing space with 'council estate scum' then encourage the bus services to adopt a Japanese system where they provide 1st, 2nd and 3rd class busses similar to train carriages.

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

C) who cares, people need to use their cars it's more important.

Compelling argument right there. :rolleyes:

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

D) nonsense, walking around the city is very easy. In fact congestion makes it easier for pedestrians free moving traffic makes it more difficult.

That's true, if you can walk. Even when you can walk, there are some days in Galway, as Treasa Mannion so famously showed us, that walking isn't exactly the safest thing to do.

Robbo

flazio wrote: »

I'm almost weeping at the memories that brings back of one particular poster and his account(s).

flazio

I can assure you I am the same poster I was when I joined boards many years ago, no name changes, no new account. This is however distracting from the debate about what an individual wants to do with their earnings to make their quality of life better being in conflict with what the city of Galway needs all its citizens of different classes to do to ensure the city is a desirable place to live and work.

?Cee?view

J.pilkington wrote: »

You have ruined my day reminding me of that poster, the Galway forum is so much more attractive and peaceful without the serial hijacker with their copy and pasting of 10000 word posts from the Internet.

I wonder are they lurking around/posting under a new alias

He's still to be seen out regularly in the real world taking photographs of car traffic. A favourite haunt of his is the Taylor's Hill/Threadneedle/Kingston crossroads.

LoonyLovegood

I'm trying to make sense of this, can someone tell me if I have this right? I'm off College Road, so if I had someone coming to visit me there's potential they might not be able to drive up?

PLL

Apologies if I've got confused but wouldn't this make traffic on the Headford Road worse?

Mrs OBumble

LoonyLovegood wrote: »

I'm trying to make sense of this, can someone tell me if I have this right? I'm off College Road, so if I had someone coming to visit me there's potential they might not be able to drive up?

Based on the proposal that's out for comment, that's right. You as a resident will get local access rights. Deliveries will be allowed during limited times of the day only.

Friends / caregivers / plumbers ... who knows. Presumably limited local access will have to find ways to deal with the 2nd two categories. I don't know how sympathetic they will be to just friends, though.


Please do let the council know your thoughts on this, and the practical problems that they will have to solve.

biko

Back on topic folks.

galwaycyclist

LoonyLovegood wrote: »

I'm trying to make sense of this, can someone tell me if I have this right? I'm off College Road, so if I had someone coming to visit me there's potential they might not be able to drive up?

No. By definition if a road is open only for access then it may be lawfully used to access a property on that road.

The more interesting question is whether your friend would be required to leave via the route they came in?

Otherwise we could find all kinds of people discovering they had "friends" on college road.

_Whimsical_

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Please do let the council know your thoughts on this, and the practical problems that they will have to solve.

Funnily enough I was about this to someone this morning resident in one the affected areas and she told me she had rang Galway City Council about how to make a submission and was told they're not accepting submissions at the moment and they won't be until August.
Having looked through your initial post the info she got was inaccurate. Hopefully others won't be told the same.

cgcsb

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

A) Build more road capacity, the bypass in particular with will massively improve city centre traffic

It isn'[t practical to spend half a billion on a bypass for what is effectively a town of 75,000 when proper public transport is a far more effective, permanent and cheaper option.

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

Cars are becoming more and more efficient, busses are one of the worst polluting vehicles on the road...bad comparison.

Incorrect, emissions per bus passenger is a fraction of emissions per car occupant.

Anne Handsome Sawhorse wrote: »

People right to person transport trumps it anyway.

Incorrect, you do not have a right to personal transport. You are given the privilege to drive provided that you pass the required tests, pay the required tax and insurance and drive within the rules of the road.

GekkePrutser

cgcsb wrote: »

It's the modern city, it's not just about Galway it's national transport policy to cut down on car usage for the reasons I mentioned before, particularly in urban areas where alternatives can easily be provided.

Galway isn't really an urban area. It's a only small provincial town on the scale of things, where public services are always going to be stretched thin due to a low customer base.

The report even says it itself: there's no base for a light trail system. In a real urban area you have multiple systems available in the city itself and its commuter towns. Buses, trams, metro, bike share.. Galway has only buses which are the least ideal way of getting around in most real cities. And the bike scheme covers such a small area that it's not worth signing up for.

I think Galway should stop their 'big city' thinking and look at solutions more appropriate for rural centres with a wide rural catchment area. Which includes cars though not exclusively.

And the crazy high house prices due to planning restrictions are only driving people even further away: if I'd ever consider buying a house it'd probably have to be a fair bit out like Craughwell due to the prices here which means a car would be absolutely required to get into Galway for work. If they want Galway to be a real city and have a large enough base for real public transport they should allow it to expand unrestricted.

cgcsb

GekkePrutser wrote: »

Galway isn't really an urban area. It's a only small provincial town on the scale of things, where public services are always going to be stretched thin due to a low customer base.

The report even says it itself: there's no base for a light trail system. In a real urban area you have multiple systems available in the city itself and its commuter towns. Buses, trams, metro, bike share.. Galway has only buses which are the least ideal way of getting around in most real cities. And the bike scheme covers such a small area that it's not worth signing up for.

I think Galway should stop their 'big city' thinking and look at solutions more appropriate for rural centres with a wide rural catchment area. Which includes cars though not exclusively.

And the crazy high house prices due to planning restrictions are only driving people even further away: if I'd ever consider buying a house it'd probably be a fair bit out like Craughwell due to the prices here which means a car would be required. If they want Galway to be a real city and have real public transport they should allow it to expand unrestricted.

Galway is indeed an urban area, as is Athlone for that matter. It is not a large city however it does have plenty of potential for implementing a good public transport system, that need not include new railways. Your yearning for a collection of car dependent villages is devaleraism at it's purist. The world doesn't work that way. Globalisation means more and more people living in urban areas and less and less people living in rural areas. People don't want to be farm hands anymore.

maudgonner

cgcsb wrote: »

It isn'[t practical to spend half a billion on a bypass for what is effectively a town of 75,000 when proper public transport is a far more effective, permanent and cheaper option.

Rubbish. Public transport may be a viable solution for the city itself, but due to the geography of Galway there's a huge amount of rural traffic that needs to cross the city to get from east to west or vice versa. And public transport does not, and likely will not, be a viable option for this. There absolutely needs to be a solution to facilitate people who need to travel over the Corrib, not just into the city.

The QC is unlikely to be able to take all the traffic, we need another bridge in the Menlo area.

what_traffic

Egligton St and Francis St will be greatly improved for public transport. On Street Car parking will be removed and buses wont get caught up in car traffic here like they do currently. Will improve journey times for buses servicing West and North of the City/Town.

gordongekko

The problem with the plan is it's far too radical and doomed to failure. There is a nice happy medium once the bypass is built. Once the bypass is built they could have proposed turning the roads into one way street with one line for traffic and one line for bus and bikes.

GekkePrutser

cgcsb wrote: »

Galway is indeed an urban area, as is Athlone for that matter. It is not a large city however it does have plenty of potential for implementing a good public transport system, that need not include new railways. Your yearning for a collection of car dependent villages is devaleraism at it's purist. The world doesn't work that way. Globalisation means more and more people living in urban areas and less and less people living in rural areas. People don't want to be farm hands anymore.

You misunderstood me, I'm not yearning for villages at all! I hate small villages (not that they're bad or anything, just personal preference, I don't like the country life). Instead I wish Galway was bigger, and I'd love to use public transport if it was feasible. I'd never move to a place like Craughwell, I couldn't cope with living in a small village. Instead I'll just keep renting and move to a bigger city when I get the chance. I think even Galway is very small and it feels claustrophobic for me (being from Amsterdam).

All I was saying is that the way that Galway is set up currently is stimulating more people moving to the countryside which causes more car traffic. Most of my colleagues that were renting in the city moved to villages when they bought a house. They should stimulate more houses being built inside the city so the price drops and the city becomes more attractive to live in. As well as making public transport more cost-effective.

Mrs OBumble

maudgonner wrote: »

Rubbish. Public transport may be a viable solution for the city itself, but due to the geography of Galway there's a huge amount of rural traffic that needs to cross the city to get from east to west or vice versa. And public transport does not, and likely will not, be a viable option for this. There absolutely needs to be a solution to facilitate people who need to travel over the Corrib, not just into the city.

The QC is unlikely to be able to take all the traffic, we need another bridge in the Menlo area.

Notice that the draft proposal that is open for discussion agrees with this point.

There is a statement that there needs to be another bridge.

Rural starting and ending journeys are not factored in to the proposed bus-route changes.

But it's not a case of build the road first and then worry about the rest. Both the road and the rest need to be planned to work together. Page 91 gives a nice view of the possible timing of the various options (pic below).

I do not think that we should wait for the bypass until we improve anything else: it has a lower cost-benefit than the Limerick-Cork motorway, which AFAIK is still not a funded project.

gordongekko

gordongekko wrote: »

The problem with the plan is it's far too radical and doomed to failure. There is a nice happy medium once the bypass is built. Once the bypass is built they could have proposed turning the roads into one way street with one line for traffic and one line for bus and bikes.

We could be waiting a while for a bypass.
Does the city do nothing in the meantime?

It isn't that radical a plan - extend the pedestrianised area by a few hundred meters all round and stop private traffic on one bridge - the alternative being a detour of a few hundred meters in most cases.

It is hard to imagine general traffic going down shop street now but for fifteen or so years after the QCB was opened cars and busses rumbled down it. Obriens bridge has effectively been closed since then.
Perhaps the Salmon weir should have been closed at the same time.

charlie_says

For bus transportation, which is a good thing in the long term, to has be more attractive to people - we really need proper shelters. Fully wind and rainproof shelters and done the right way otherwise the bus is simply not attractive to people.

It has to be the most convenient mode of transportation in most cases otherwise doomed to failure.