City just crazy

ben.schlomo

Left Eyre Square at 605, home to the east side by 620. Grand soft cycling weather.

McGiver

John_Rambo wrote:

Proper park and ride facilities along with a non-local congestion charge for outsiders refusing to use them would be perfect.

I think at this stage of the game, enforcement and restriction of demand is the only way left. And I would add ban personal traffic from town centre as well.

Some minor road infrastructure projects would help as one of the posters mentioned but they aren't the solution. They are only secondary and supportive of the main task of reducing the demand.

McGiver

jjpep wrote:

Excellent point. There are different campaign groups in galway that you could join. I'm part of a group that campaigns on public transport and cycling issue's but there are others as well that have focuses on things like their local area, getting Greenaway's connected to the city etc etc

Can you link please? Happy to join.

Bobeagleburger

ben.schlomo wrote: »

Left Eyre Square at 605, home to the east side by 620. Grand soft cycling weather.

Cyclist myself at times but also car user. Not sure smugness helps the thread.

Just my 2c

Bobeagleburger

Probably one of the worst days I've seen for traffic. Absolute chaos.

Can someone post email addresses of councillors/tds/whoever in charge.

Said it before but very little to nothing being done about the transport mess in the city.

Mrs OBumble

McGiver wrote: »

And I would add ban personal traffic from town centre as well.

What do you regard as the town centre?

ben.schlomo

RoboKlopp wrote: »

ben.schlomo wrote: »

Left Eyre Square at 605, home to the east side by 620. Grand soft cycling weather.

Cyclist myself at times but also car user. Not sure smugness helps the thread.

Just my 2c

The thread is a sh1tshow in fairness. A never ending circle of people complaining about buses being late in a car strangled city, or being stuck in car traffic (while sitting in it) or getting bogged down in semantics and pointless petty arguments.
I'm not being smug at all, just an example to those who are capable of it that cycling in Galway is most often the best option. Laziness stops many people from bothering but it's the fastest, healthiest and cheapest way to get around the city. If mindsets don't change then the car traffic will only get worse in time.

djPSB

blueskys wrote: »

Left athenry at 5.15pm arrived knocknacarra 7.45pm . The worst i have ever seen it.. there were two guards at the junction but there should have been more directing the side lanes off the main routes. Actually thought of packing my job in today if this is the foreseeable future, it's bananas.

You'd be in Dublin quicker. And that's not an exaggeration.

McGiver

zell12 wrote:

Well there is a Gluas meeting on Monday. We elect Connolly and at least she's trying hard unlike the other four The public meeting at 8pm on Monday night in the Harbour Hotel is a further step in the campaign for an integrated public transport system, including light rail, for Galway. Deputy Connolly is appealing to everyone, including public representatives, to attend the meeting and to join the campaign.

As much as I would love light rail, it is dead unfortunately I'm afraid. Irish Gov not gonna give a penny for peripheral town in the west and without that nobody will invest in this marginal town in marginal region privately.

It works like this - all gov money goes to the Dublin, them some scraps for Cork. Then scraps of scraps are for Limerick, Waterford and Galway to fight over. LK Council seem to be much better at it. G Council are hopeless. You can tell by number of new developments for example. Practically nothing new built in G in last 5 years.

McGiver

ben.schlomo wrote:

The thread is a sh1tshow in fairness. A never ending circle of people complaining about buses being late in a car strangled city, or being stuck in car traffic (while sitting in it) or getting bogged down in semantics and pointless petty arguments. I'm not being smug at all, just an example to those who are capable of it that cycling in Galway is most often the best option. Laziness stops many people from bothering but it's the fastest, healthiest and cheapest way to get around the city. If mindsets don't change then the car traffic will only get worse in time.

It's not only laziness. Cycling can be quite dangerous and it's not for everyone, you need some courage for it . Especially with drivers not following rules and with poor, absent, stupid and dilapidated cycling infrastructure. Proper, cleverly built, safe, well maintained infrastructure and then we can talk.
Also, the climate in Galway is particularly bad for cycling. After 5 years cycling I got tired of wind and rain, summer is OK but at least 6 months of the year are bad and out of those 3 months are totally awful.

blueskys

Issue today was that lights went out at a main junction in the city
Took Gardaí an hour at least to send someone down to it ( This I know because I know someone who rang it in to gardai and they hadn't heard about it at that point. In fairness I am not blaming the gardai for this)
The question for the council is ( and they are supposed to be monitoring the lights via cctv or so we are told):
When the lights went, did they notify the gardai straight away? Or at all?Is there an actual traffic plan in place for when this occurs?
Answers on a brown envelope...

swiftman

I'll add my idea, rough but it's something.
Red routes to be closed of to all traffic apart from buses, taxi's, bikes/motorbikes and ambulance/Gardai etc.
Quay/Shop St etc staying like they are, only pedestrian.
Other roads like Eglington St, Eyre St to be free from traffic but bus, Taxi's and bikes would be allowed to use so people wouldn't be free to walk in middle of the road, but easier and safer to cross as less traffic. 
All street parking in the red zone gone. Business delivery have to be finished by 10am.
Not happy with traffic going through Market St and Abbeygate St upper but traffic from O'briens bridge needs to go somewhere. Really not in a place where we can close down one of our bridges. Street parking on market st would be gone. 
Oh yes, O'Brien's bridge to courthouse via market st and newtownsmith would be one way.
People could still come over O'Briens do U turn at that 'Roundabout' and drop of alongside Seven (kellys)

McGiver

Mrs OBumble wrote:

What do you regard as the town centre?

I don't know, at least Eyre Sq, Eglinton St and Eyre St?

MattressRick

Traffic lights still not fixed overnight FFS

Doctors room ghost

Finnegan and the lads will knock a good half hour of sh1te talk out of the traffic today.they might even get a waffler on from the council to blow a bit of sh1te talk.off then for the weekend and back to basics Monday.
You’ll have richards touring the city then blowing more sh1te.how he still has a job is beyond me.”yea John here traffic is still sh1te.back to studio”. Ffs.

John_Rambo

McGiver wrote: »

As much as I would love light rail, it is dead unfortunately I'm afraid. Irish Gov not gonna give a penny for peripheral town in the west and without that nobody will invest in this marginal town in marginal region privately.

It works like this - all gov money goes to the Dublin, them some scraps for Cork. Then scraps of scraps are for Limerick, Waterford and Galway to fight over. LK Council seem to be much better at it. G Council are hopeless. You can tell by number of new developments for example. Practically nothing new built in G in last 5 years.

Who told you that? You couldn’t be more wrong. Dublin city looks after itself, it washes it’s own face and more, 10 Billion leaves Dublin every year to subsidise the rest of the country.

Cities are the economic drivers of the country. They are where the money is made. It’s about time the cities start investing in themselves, that includes Galway.

youngrun

Doctors room ghost wrote: »

Finnegan and the lads will knock a good half hour of sh1te talk out of the traffic today.they might even get a waffler on from the council to blow a bit of sh1te talk.off then for the weekend and back to basics Monday.
You’ll have richards touring the city then blowing more sh1te.how he still has a job is beyond me.”yea John here traffic is still sh1te.back to studio”. Ffs.

What traffic solutions would you suggest ? 1/3/5 + longer term plans
Hard to see any improvement in my view without a major move in Short term ie next year, 3 years, to park and rides, and buses and or car bans in certain areas

McGiver

John_Rambo wrote:

Who told you that? You couldn’t be more wrong. Dublin city looks after itself, it washes it’s own face and more, 10 Billion leaves Dublin every year to subsidise the rest of the country.

Show me the evidence, hard data. I'm talking about infrastructure here not social payments etc. How much is invested in D and how much to C, LK and G? By the central government. For example in 2018, €2b was spent on Transport by the central gov. How much of that is D+The Pale and how much G? A lot of infrastructure projects in D/Pale (motorways, tunnels, Luas, dart, railways). Haven't noticed anything in G. Tuam gort motorway, that's all.

John_Rambo wrote:

Cities are the economic drivers of the country. They are where the money is made. It’s about time the cities start investing in themselves, that includes Galway.

Yes, but that isn't enough, government funding is needed. Irish townlets cannot raise enough cash for infrastructure & development projects.

what_traffic

RoboKlopp wrote: »

Can someone post email addresses of councillors/tds/whoever in charge.

Said it before but very little to nothing being done about the transport mess in the city.

How about you starting this yourself?
It ain't that hard to find the email addresses, phone no's of the Cllr's from the Galway City Council website.

what_traffic

swiftman wrote: »

Not happy with traffic going through Market St and Abbeygate St upper but traffic from O'briens bridge needs to go somewhere. Really not in a place where we can close down one of our bridges. Street parking on market st would be gone. 
Oh yes, O'Brien's bridge to courthouse via market st and newtownsmith would be one way.
People could still come over O'Briens do U turn at that 'Roundabout' and drop of alongside Seven (kellys)

Does it? O Briens Bridge has very low volumes when looking at the stats v's the other Bridges. Your roundabout suggestion looks good to me. You can drive in but ya have to return the way you came.

John_Rambo

McGiver wrote: »

Show me the evidence, hard data. I'm talking about infrastructure here not social payments etc. How much is invested in D and how much to C, LK and G? By the central government. For example in 2018, €2b was spent on Transport by the central gov. How much of that is D+The Pale and how much G? A lot of infrastructure projects in D/Pale (motorways, tunnels, Luas, dart, railways). Haven't noticed anything in G. Tuam gort motorway, that's all.

It’s the same all over the world McGiver. Cities subsidise rural areas, if you want to research it and spend a few hours collating data to prove that fact wrong, go for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland

what_traffic

ben.schlomo wrote: »

Left Eyre Square at 605, home to the east side by 620. Grand soft cycling weather.

I found it cool. Took me about 10 minutes to warm up. Had a summer rain jacket - could have done with the winter one yesterday.
Commute yesterday Parkmore to Rahoon took about 35 mins via Lough Atalia/City Centre at 18h00. Did not realize until I got home and was listening to the local news about the additional CAR choas yesterday evening. It looked like the normal/usual car traffic that I was passing on the bike for me in that part of town.

Good video on twitter that I spotted this morning.
https://twitter.com/DaithiOCodaigh/status/1042868720513769472
- guy cycling home from Parkmore via the N6. Really shows how the CARS clogged up the roads creating the CAR traffic on the N6 once the Bodkin Junction lights failed

McGiver

John_Rambo wrote:

It’s the same all over the world McGiver. Cities subsidise rural areas, if you want to research it and spend a few hours collating data to prove that fact wrong, go for it.

I'm talking about government expenditure for infrastructure l, especially large and expensive ones. Light rail, dart are in D only and nowhere else.

John_Rambo

McGiver wrote: »

I'm talking about government expenditure for infrastructure l, especially large and expensive ones. Light rail, dart are in D only and nowhere else.

City infrastructure is massively used, DART and LUAS are at capacity now and pay for themselves, they’re the busiest trains in the country. Unlike rural and motorway profits that are subsidised a LOT more per rata.

Staying on topic, Galway deserves a light rail system, the car needs to be pushed out of the city. I can see this happening in the next ten years.

Mrs OBumble

McGiver wrote: »

I'm talking about government expenditure for infrastructure l, especially large and expensive ones. Light rail, dart are in D only and nowhere else.

D ... the place that has half if the country's population in a tiny fraction of its landmass.

Vs L and G which have a motorway between them that emply most of the time.

Yeah, no infrastructure.

Ashleigh1986

This perfectly sums up this village .
We build a new Garda station on east side of city costing millions ,yet no gardai directing traffic when lights were still off this morning.
One man up a step ladder trying to get traffic lights working .
yet again no accountability and nothing will be done or changed.
Galway will never get a glus....if Dublin gave one to galway .... Cork and Limerick would want one .
Ain't going to happen !!!!

zulutango

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

D ... the place that has half if the country's population in a tiny fraction of its landmass.

Vs L and G which have a motorway between them that emply most of the time.

Yeah, no infrastructure.

It's chicken and egg. Half the population live there because there is employment because there is investment in infrastructure because half the population live there, etc, etc.

Infrastructure spending is supposed to be based not on where a population lives but where you want them to live. If we want Galway and Limerick to develop then we have to build infrastructure in these cities. And it has to be the right infrastructure. The motorways are of questionable benefit. They are good at moving busses and trucks which is good for the economy but they also promote car dependency which is very damaging to the economy. The only sensible way forward for Galway is to heavily invest in sustainable transport infrastructure, i.e. rail, bus corridors, cycle networks.

Your Face

what_traffic wrote: »

OK so perhaps elaborate on how "similar" your proposal for Galway will be?

I will.
It doesn't need to link all the islands and cross all the inlets on the west coast, that's not needed.
Just one tunnel with 6 lanes spanning the distance approximately from Oranmore to above Barna.
It's a big project but I don't think that we need to be an oil and gas exporting nation to fund it.

zulutango

Your Face wrote: »

Just one tunnel with 6 lanes spanning the distance approximately from Oranmore to above Barna.
It's a big project but I don't think that we need to be an oil and gas exporting nation to fund it.

That is pretty funny :pac:

Your Face

zulutango wrote: »

That is pretty funny :pac:

That was my original point - The lack of any imagination to even consider a large scale engineering project.