Galway traffic

A cool little vid shot in New York city showing how useful and capable cargo bikes can be. Just putting here for those who say you can't do X, Y or Z with a cargo bike. As it turns out, very often you can

2 good articles in the last few days fro the Irish Examiner covering both cycling and PT

I was pulling CSO data for something else and had a quick dig around for cycling & walking related data from the last census in 2016. A few things popped out

Galway has the highest % of people commuting by walking out of all 5 cities at 16.4%. It also has the second highest % of cyclists at 5.8%. That kinda puts to bed the argument that people won't walk or cycle because rain

Often on this thread and other boards, the old line is thrown out that cycling is only for the young, the data shows there are cyclists of all ages, across both sexes, on our roads

There was a jump of 43% from the 2011 to 2016 census in the numbers cycling

Cycling has been growing since 2002 with the numbers of women cycling nearly doubling

There was further data from the National Travelling Survey in 2019

First up, distance cycled shows a hell of a lot of cyclists are cycling a hell of a lot further than even I realised with the men age 75+ cycling the second highest avg distances overall

As for why people cycle...

Lastly, in terms of what is needed to make people cycle more, its pretty clear, safe infrastructure is the overwhelming answer

There was also data relating to students travelling patterns. Most of it makes for abysmal reading for primary level children, however specifically focusing on Galway's second & third level students we see over 66% are walking or cycling

The bus connects strategy, specifically the cross city link has already received full approval at council and govt level. Its gone through the various public consultations and is now with ABP for final approval with the decision due in Mar. Opportunities for lodging objections has passed outside of someone taking the ABP decision to judicial review which can never be ruled out.

The only potential justification for this is the decision not to do either an Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR) or a Natura Impact Survey (NIS) which they were told they could avoid as nothing is going into the water and there will be nets etc erected along the banks prior to construction to catch anything potentially falling into the water (tools, debris etc).

The Salmon Weir carries the lowest volume of cars of all the bridges, largely because its so narrow and doesn't allow for greater speeds. In terms of making a car-free spine through the city for public transport, its a no-brainer.

Nope, its going right through the whole period as its more difficult to do. Simply put, they can't wait until the mid 2030's to implement it. As it is, we're in year 5 of the current GTS, most of which was taken up with design, consultation and planning applications. The next 5 years will see the majority of the bus connects program implemented.

Without the cross-city link route, all other PT improvement works will have minimal effect in terms of driving modal shift away from cars where the whole point is to increase capacity on the remaining road network for those where driving is the only option.

Its not called out specifically, but forms part of other elements, specifically the Spiddal to Oranmore greenway, see from page 68 onwards.

Its being prioritized now simply because there was a colossal demand for it when they did a survey a few months into covid after people had a few months of cycling around Salthill without cars and realised how much safer it was. I can't recall what drove the survey or have a link to it, but I remember safe cycling infrastructure along the prom being the highest voted item by a LONG way.

Below is the drawing they included which, you can tell, they hadn't fully looked at in terms of the above greenway I mentioned.

If travelling Knocknacarra to Galway City, what route would you suggest, using Dr Mannix Rd? Let's say Joyce's to Jurys.

In fairness to them they would have published in local press, Facebook, twitter and their own website as well as announcements to the council members themselves. Its also been discussed several times on local radio. Note this is the way they do it for every undertaking

There will always be some who are not aware but I don't know what you want them to do that would be legitimately feasible, practical and within their budgets.