M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

That's what the masses believe.

There seems to be a kind of culture war playing out, with identity politics taking to the fore with regards this project in particular but also with regards road construction more generally in Ireland.

The majority of people in this country drive. The people who believe that an outer distributor won't solve traffic problems, likely drive. The people who believe that better value can be got by investing in other elements of Galway infrastructure likely drive. The people who are hoping to see less emissions in urban areas likely drive.

The only "us and them" that needs to be discussed here is whether you believe that this road will be a solution to Galways traffic congestion problems or or whether you believe that this road will perpetuate more traffic problems.

Even many of the people who are in favour of this road believe that it will not fix Galway's traffic problems. The solution to Galway's traffic problems will be investment in the alternative transport modes. That's the reality. In that context, seeing a heavy focus on one road (€600m, years of work etc) is disappointing. If it were announced as one complimentary measure beside a huge level of investment in prioritising alternative transport modes in the city core, it would likely win over the likes of me. But right now it's pretty much this road as an isolated infrastructure project.

For the record, I don't think that I should be pigeon-holed for that. I drive, just like everyone else. I'm not a wealthy Dublin urbanite or anything: I haven't been on a bus or train in years and have crappy public transport options. The pedestrian and cycle infrastructure around me is dismal. I don't for one second underestimate the fact that many people in Galway currently feel that they need to drive. But I can think all that and also look at this road and see a white elephant.

Frankly, I don't understand why the road project is not wrapped in "supporting measures". You'd get rid of a large chunk of the opposition pretty much overnight.

Well that's fine, but Galway is not getting a bypass: this road is a distributor, not a bypass.

This is literally the reason the majority of posters who are against this road, are against it. It's not a bypass. It's a distributor. It's designed for urban traffic and to facilitate development. It won't function as a bypass, because it's not designed to. It will facilitate urban development. There's nothing wrong with that either. But if you want a bypass, then you're going to be disappointed by this road.

I do drive. I suspect I drive WAY too much. I've been stuck commuting on the other bypass-distributors (M50, N40) for so much of my life that I got to the point where I asked "what is the problem here?". Answer: many junctions in close proximity to an urban area stops a road from working as a bypass.

On the discussion of Tractors etc, yep, they're regularly seen in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic on the N40. We're spending a few hundred million euro more now, just to get a little bit more free-flow on that "ring-road".

JLT: 1998, KRR: 2006, BRR: 2013, SRR:2013, Dunkettle: 2023?. The next "just one more project" on the N40 will probably be Douglas, then on to the next bottleneck and rinse and repeat. The curse of the "bypass distributor".

I drive, and in the words of a poster above 'probably too much.'

I also cycle and would do much more if there were more, and safer, cycle paths as well as the development of the Barna and Connemara greenways which would remove some traffic off the roads. However public transport is the main issue. We need greater development of rail, Gluas and bus routes alongside Park and Rides on the periphery.

As a driver I'm more than happy to use my car much less when decent alternatives are offered. The distributor road, and the gridlock it'll bring offer nothing to me nor my fellow residents.

I'd generally agree but if you talk with people that drive in Galway on a regular basis there's a strong belief in many of them that this planned road will be a resolution to all their woes. I'm not saying it's a scientific study, but largely anecdotal evidence suggests the above.

The quantities of traffic that need a bypass (emphasis on need!) are apparently small. Apparently (according to the studies published) the majority of traffic in Galway is local, going from one part of the city to another part of the city, rather than trying to get past the city. The solution to that urban congestion is a transition more efficient transport modes within the urban area.

That's extremely difficult to achieve, I don't mean to make it sound easy. Like, the scale of the effort is absolutely enormous.

Yep, the team behind this project literally state:

"A key conclusion of this initial assessment of the transport problem was that through traffic or by-passable traffic is not the major component of the problem and that any improvement to the national road network, if required, needed to be developed within the context of an overall transport strategy for Galway that comprehensively considered all modes."

They go on to state that the Galway Transport Strategy is the proper solution to the Galway traffic congestion issues. To that end, the GTS states that the core cycling network should be complete by 2024, the core bus network by 2024, the radial bus priority measures by 2021, the congestion charges in 2019 or so, and the ring road should begin in 2021 and be complete in around 2030.

Your insistence that the cost of the project is due to environmental objections is as ridiculous as your claim that the people voted to build the Galway Bypass. On the first point, please explain how environmental objections added more to the cost of the project building large and complex engineering structures like tunnels and viaducts. It's the huge cost of labour, plant and materials that goes into designing and building these which sees the cost of this well above other projects.

On the second point, the number of people who voted for any of the government parties based on building the Galway Bypass is very small. Most people in this country aren't bothered about it and it wouldn'thave crossed their mind when deciding who to vote for. I'm sure most would see c.50km of dual carriageway elsewhere at the same cost as better value.

I don't think too many people are saying "build it cheaper". For instance, I'm saying spend way MORE on Galway infrastructure, but that the priority is the difficult bits in the city centre that the GTS explicitly states should come before this ring road.

But anyway to reply more constructively, if you really want to build it cheaper, you can kill two birds with one stone by converting it into an actual bypass which has a chance of working: get rid of the excess junctions. By all means plan a distributor network inside that, then.

Absolutely, but we all know it won't happen.

They also voted for a government which pledged to drastically reduce emissions in less than a decade.