Galway traffic

Its about who the actual users are: Often people who have mobility problems but do still walk prefer steps to slopes. Never understood it myself until I used crutches for a month: steps were far easier to navigate.

Does it mean the manic speeding has slowed?

traffic been bad i would imagine a huge amount of people want to work from home....

A lot of firms are requiring staff to return to the office several days a week.

Also I heard that some people are opting to work from the office rather than paying for heat and electricity at home during the day, might be a tipping point issue for some.

Direct follow up on that....

Have you ever used this link?

If its all about the actual users.

Answer this one for me.

The gradient of the steps here is the same as sections of the ramp, now there is actually a section of the ramp that is steeper than the gradient of the steps themselves. Explain this design?

I think the bypass decision will become the moment Ireland joined progressive societies with regard to planning. I think it's the moment we finally grew up and started to have an adult conversation about this stuff.

Pretty good article Here. I agree with all of it.

Galway ring road decision should signal the end of car-first planning

Improved transport system can be delivered once authorities abandon the belief that the solution to every problem is another road

Is there anything to be said for another road? Since the introduction of the Climate Act in 2021, the proposal to build a second ring road around Galway city has changed from a merely terrible idea, to an illegal one. The sooner planners, local authorities and Transport Infrastructure Ireland realise this, the sooner a safe, affordable and uncongested transport system can be delivered for Galway and other towns and cities across Ireland.

The Galway City Ring Road, for which planning permission will shortly be quashed, was not to be a “bypass” to allow cars to avoid the city. Rather, it was designed to deliver more cars into the already congested medieval city, at a cost of hundreds of millions of euro. This was made clear in the planning reports put before An Bord Pleanála.

The planners of the Galway City Ring Road saw an increased number of private car journeys as a positive effect of the project, which in their eyes would outweigh the “significant negative impact on carbon emissions and climate”. The report found that the ring road would not result in any change in favour of the use public transport or active travel. Most bizarrely, the planners acknowledged the ring road would do nothing to relieve congestion, with longer average journey times expected, due to an increase in the volume of car traffic.

The sooner local and national authorities abandon the 20th-century mindset, where the solution to every problem is another road, the sooner a safe, affordable and uncongested transport system can be delivered for Galway and other towns and cities across Ireland

Thankfully, since the Act, such proposals are not just foolish, they are also illegal.

I don't think an updated GTS will kill the ring road, the current council executive will pursue the project to the bitter end. I'd say the consultants are billing as many hours as they can while they can.

Best case scenario is it gets killed before the GTS review and the GTS gets overhauled.

Probably right - but the hasty response from County & City Council and NTA to it I thought was interesting.

I think it was PR move just to avoid the heat at that time, waiting now in CW 51 for the buried PR piece about a strategic review of the GTS.

I know you didn't mean to make this point and you probably thought the opposite was true but as someone who has lived in Dublin for a long time I can assure you that traffic congestion in the city now is, by my estimation less than half, perhaps a third, of what it was in the early 2000s. You must not know Dublin very well or for a long time.

It was desperate back then when there were hardly any bus lanes, you couldn't get anywhere by car in any decent time, it was worse by bus and forget about cycling unless you were a dare devil. Cars also spouted real fumes back then, not your new fangled Euro5 standard nonsense, you'd be physically sick from it in the city centre. If you had a health complaint you'd just stay at home.

And then there were the accidents, accidents were daily and often fatal. Fatal Road collisions in Dublin are thankfully gone for good, perhaps 1 every couple of years. I see other posters have linked you to the canal cordon count which is educational, if I were you if read it thoroughly, it shows in detailed numbers how provision of public transport, walking/cycling and restrictions on car use can effectively and permanently reduce congestion for relatively small investment. Remember the original 2 luas lines were built for less than what Galways proposed ring road would have cost even adjusting for inflation and they are far longer and higher spec than any pt Galway would require.

The introduction of bus corridors was revolutionary in Dublin as was the luas and the covid mobility measures. There are now plans afoot to stop cars driving through the city centre entirely by closing some central streets to cars, making it access only. It can't come soon enough.

“I know you didn't mean to make this point and you probably thought the opposite was true but…” all of that is possible because there are alternative routes for the cars. M50? Eastlink? Port tunnel? Infrastructure which relieves pressure on the inner city core.

Nope the M50 was built before that, east link built well before that. Port tunnel opened in 2003 and was a great asset as it removed hgvs away from the city, the port tunnel isn't used by cars much though because its heavily tolled, it serves to remove trucks from the port area quickly and efficiently. Galway doesn't have this issue.

The real change came with the gradual improvements to public transport and active travel.