M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

Building the Ring Road is fully compatible with the overall lowering of emissions at a national level, especially as EVs take over - commitments in one area can be balanced against others. Besides, the more radical public transport interventions in Galway that the Ring Road will enable are also key to reducing emissions.

The country did not give a majority to parties that said "we will lower emissions by scrapping the Galway Ring Road." It voted for a government that said "we will lower emissions and we will build the Galway Ring Road."

Schools and hospitals isn't a like for like comparison, everybody benefits from them unlike this road were it will only be available for the privileged few who can afford to buy and run a car and it will only further contribute to more unsustainable sprawl.

Really? ABP and the planning documents said that building the Galway Ring Road will make it impossible for the government to reduce emissions at a nationwide level? That doesn't sound right. Could you quote the relevant parts of the documents?

@McGrath5 Everyone benefits from roads. They're literally how we get from A to B, no matter what mode of transport you use. If you're worried about the affordability of cars (and I agree with you that cars are too expensive), we could always cut vehicle taxes and slash petrol duties. That should make driving much more affordable.

Okay, this is something people say a lot, but it’s one of those “facts” that has only repetition to back it up. In truth, EVs produce around 5~6% of the amount of particulate matter compared to ICE vehicles. I think the confusion is from a study in 2018 that said that once exhaust emissions were elimitated that non-exhaust emissions would become the dominant source from road transport.

90%+ of all particulate emissions from motor cars come from out of the exhaust pipe. Take away a combustion engine from a car and you’ve immediately taken away 90% of the total particulate emissions, all else being equal... which it isn’t.

One big difference is brakes. ICE cars use friction braking at all speeds, which produces significant amount of brake-dust. Brake-dust particles are produced in greatest quantities at higher speeds (you know this already if you’ve ever been told that heavy braking at speed wears out your brake-pads; it’s the pads that create the brake-dust). EVs, on the other hand, only use the brake pads to bring the car to a halt from speeds below 10 km/h; above that, all braking force comes from driving a generator. At that speed, there’s very little wearing of the pads, and so very little dust produced.

Finally, however, we do have the tyres. It’s here - and only here - that there’s “no difference” in particulate matter, and where EVs are slightly worse, due to higher average running-weight.

The takeaway from this is that the cure for high particulate emissions in future urban settings will be a combination of having fewer vehicles and lower average traffic speeds, as it’s speed that dramatically increases tyre wear. (In rural settings, there really isn’t enough traffic near homes for particulates to be a health concern).

In that light, a project that aims to increase urban traffic speeds is not exactly a great idea.

I think you may have misread the context of my comments regarding the opinion of the man on the street. You're bringing up a different problem, which is the extreme power that NIMBYs have in this country to oppose infrastructure projects. There is no way to prevent these vexatious objections, and they will happen no matter what the planners do. As such, the only option we have is to take NIMBYs' power away through whatever legal means may be necessary. I agree that they will probably succeed in delaying this project, but hopefully it will be the last major project they are able to drag through the courts.

Ah now. Public transport has improved majorly since the 1970s. Transport of all kinds is so much faster and safer in this country than it was back then. To take a guess at your question, I would say public transport didn't improve enough to satisfy you. That's fine, but if the government built a new hospital to help reduce waiting lists and then didn't hire enough doctors or nurses to treat all the patients that needed to be seen, would you then say that proves that building more hospitals is the wrong solution?

I'm not sure why anyone would be walking or cycling on a dual carriageway, especially one that far outside Galway city centre. Walkers and cyclists will benefit from the reduction in traffic and reallocation of road space in Galway city centre that this new road is key to providing.

It was delayed as it wasn't well planned nor financially feasible. Environmental objections had sod all to do with it, that's an urban myth. Though they will definitely be a major part of the appeal process.

I would go back and read the context of that statement in greater detail.

@[Deleted User] If Aarhus proves an obstacle we'll just need to repeal the offending articles. However, I'm sure we won't need to go that far, as we can learn from other European states which are nominally signed up to Aarhus but seem to have beaten their NIMBYs regardless.

You dismissed the people on the street. Foolishly I think. There are an awful lot of them, many wielding power and with great resources. Some are Nimbys but more are perceptive citizens who've worked out that a staggeringly white elephant won't help the local traffic situation in any way.

I doubt that extra burdens on planners is what is taking the power away from NIMBYs in other European countries, but whatever they're doing that lets them go ahead and build infrastructure without it being dragged through the courts for years, we need to do that too. Separately, if you're serious about making major changes to road space distribution, you'll definitely want to make it harder for those who lose out to challenge your plans, or even new cycle lanes will end up going through the courts (like in Sandymount).

As regards the figures you have chosen to share for student travel mode in Ireland, I'm not entirely sure what argument you're trying to support, unless of course you want to make several unsupported extrapolations from those graphs to say that public transport is now slower or more dangerous than it was in the 1970s.

@Seathrun66 Yes, that was me. Please describe the context of my remarks. This is my fourth or fifth time bringing up the context, so I presume you have chosen to ignore it.

You can misrepresent the context for those comments if you want. I don't mind, it's there for anyone to read.

A judicial review is inevitable for almost any important infrastructure project in Ireland these days. This is a symptom of our broken planning system, which allows NIMBYs to easily delay infrastructure projects without penalty for years on end. Hopefully the upcoming reforms of the planning system will bring us more in line with our European peers, who seem to have defeated their NIMBYs.

Editing to add that it seems unlikely to me that ABP completely ignored the various climate plans. That would seem like a rather obvious deficiency. Are you saying that because you think that any project which is associated with a net increase in emissions is no longer allowed to proceed in Ireland (and thus approval for this project de facto proves they ignored the plans), or because ABP themselves stated they chose to ignore them when reaching their decision?