Getting around Galway

Does anyone really think that with great cycle lanes, A 4 year-old could travel to school by themselves? Really? Or even an 8 year old?

Bit early to be on the lash isn't it?

Is there any reason that there couldn't be a park and ride from the car park at Loughgeorge? For anyone east of Claregalway it'd be great & take away a lot of traffic through Claregalway...

Yeah, that's where I mean. There is a bus lane into CG and on a weekend that small stretch can be absolutely backed up. And it tends to flow again until you get to the Parkmore Business Park turn off.

Thanks, was looking at the wrong map. Was looking at the "Desire Maps". Doh

Fake news! Are the other 59 Council employees? Galway is the most hostile cycling city in the country, when it should be the opposite given its huge student population

Thanks for all the informative posts over the years!

Where is the Park n Ride in Bearna supposed to be? Eamon Ryan said in Dail it is off WDR in Cappagh, anything more specific?

Perhaps in the City Dev plan? thought I read in local paper a while back that it was to be North of Cappagh Park itself? Personally think it makes more sense to have a P&R in Bearna at this stage and have a City Bus Service extend to Bearna like the 404 for Oranmore. #404 and this Bearna Service should run every 15mins

Also showed Galway City Commuters have the shortest commute time - 23 mins. Just as well we have so many people walking and cycling to work in the City

the data from the cso is there.

government has put a lot of money into promoting cycling and installation of cycle lanes and yet cso states more people cycled as their form of transport back in 1986 than in 2022. Perhaps people just do not like to cycle in rain/cold no matter how you sugar coat cyclepaths.

The real waste from that data is how poor public transport is. "Train, DART or LUAS" increased alot but it started from practically nothing, where the LUAS deployment and DART advancements brought the numbers up. But the "Bus, minibus or coach" shows how piss poor the service is that there was no big growth.

This is correct and while most comments on this thread bore me it is a example of a good headline that in reality paints the wrong picture. You are 110 % correct.

That means they live 3km from work, and still drive through the traffic jams 😀

No they have not. Where is the DART and LUAS in Galway - show me where the installation of all these cycle lanes in Galway City has occurred? City Bus services have improved .Try and keep it local will ya?

"And others too since". Do enlighten us as to the many kms of cycle lanes newly built in Galway. I look forward to finding out about them.

We've been through this before but it's worth covering again for those who still don't get it. A windscreen view might give you the impression that there is cycle route across the city from Knocknacarra to Ballybrit but the reality is very different. The cycle lanes only exist where they provides the least safety benefit, along side the road on straight stretches, but they disappear completely at the junctions where they are needed most.

If you're travelling from Cappagh Road you have to travel through seven roundabouts before you get to the Quincentenial Bridge. The cycle lane doesn't start until after you've passed through the first two roundabouts and then you get a narrow painted strip along the side of the road that just disappears at each of the next four roundabouts. The Deane Roundabout (Bishop O'Donnell Road) is bad, and I've had a couple of very close calls there, but the Browne Roundabout (back of the hospital) is absolutely terrifying. If you ever wondered why you see so many grown adults cycling down the wrong side of the Seamus Quirke Road to get to the hospital, university or city centre in the mornings, the reason is not because it makes their journey's quicker, it is because going around the Browne Roundabout to take the 3rd or 4th exit is too frightening to even consider. I take the 2nd exit there, so I get to stay in the outside lane, but I was still hit by an impatient/inattentive driver recently, even though I was lit up like a Christmas tree.

After you get over the bridge and along the Headford Road you have to navigate the Kirwan junction (Menlo Park Hotel) where the cycle lane just disappears again. There you have two choices:

1) you get off the bike and walk through junction as a pedestrian, queuing at the signal controlled crossings, to get to the bike lane heading out Bothar na dTreabh.

2) act like a driver and move out into either of centre two of the 4 lanes approaching this junction. This is a manoeuvre only the very brave would consider.

At all the regular crossroads along the way (7 in total) you have to contend with drivers cutting across you as if you didn't exist, when they are turning left. Then, once you get to Ballybrit, you have to join a 100km/h dual carriageway if your final destination is Parkmore. I did that once and, even though I'd consider myself a robust cyclist, I'd never do it again.

Anyone who thinks there is a useable cycling route from the western residential areas of Galway to the employment centres on the east of the city has clearly never tried to cycle it. Galway City Council has spent less than zero on cycling infrastructure. Instead it has tacked on substandard rubbish to general roads projects to allow them to be classified as 'active travel' and get roads built and resurfaced using national 'active travel' funding. The main benefit of the existing cycle lanes, far from making cycling safer or encouraging people to cycling, is actually to increase motor traffic speeds by moving people on bikes out of the way on straight stretches.

This is the kind of roundabout you build if you want to encourage cycling (and walking):

But this is what we have instead in Galway:

This is the kind of cycle path you build if you actually want to encourage cycling:

But this is what we have instead in Galway:

Right now the only people who cycle in Galway are the particularly stubborn/reckless, who really want to cycle and do so in spite of the dangers, and those forced to do so from economic necessity. The fact that many people choose not to use dangerous, disconnected cycling infrastructure is not an argument to provide less cycling infrastructure. We can see from other parts of Europe, places with worse weather than Galway or steeper hills, that it is entirely possible to get 35-50% of commuting happening by bike, freeing up road space for those who still do need to drive and making everyone's journey quicker. But to achieve that you need to provide useable infrastructure and we haven't even begun to try.