M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

If CAP is only guidelines then courts shouldn't have ruled against ABP in the past, but they did. So CAP must be more than guidelines in the eyes of the legal system.

TII is not a roads agency; it's a Transport agency. If Galway Council had wanted light rail and buses, that would have been managed by TII too.

..... the Vegetable Illuminati, I have consistently pointed out the only way I believe this road will be built, which is to tie it to traffic reduction, active and public transport plans in the city and surrounding area. One big master plan, all at once going into ABP. I'd fully support such a plan, as would many currently against it on here.

Am with you on that.

That has been the great weakness of the GCRR and GTS 2016.

The modal share for Public Transport and Cycling are in the low single digits in 2039 post GCRR based on the active and public transport plans in the city and surrounding area.

It's kind of irrelevant anyway, it's not the government that made a balls of it the previous two times they put stupid things to plan.

No, it was a load of nonsense (too late to fix Galway's traffic, so let's not even try?) all wrapped up in a bit of good old fashioned racism and knee-jerk green-bashing.

For bonus irony, dude posted this on Christmas Day too..

l have no emotional attachment towards Galway whatsoever. I've been there maybe ten times in my life, never before 2000, and every damn time, I've been stuck in traffic: for what is basically a jumped-up town, it's absolutely ridiculous how many cars there are in the road. The place is a mess, and now its planners are trying to repeat the mistakes of Dublin and Cork.

.. and "immigrants arriving in droves" doesn't sound even a tiny bit racist to you? I can remember the Daily Mail saying the same about Irish people in the UK...

It seems clear to me that the project could benefit from a "dispensation" or "derogation" of some kind from the rules in the Climate Action Plan, by saying that other projects - if completed - would complement this one. But those other projects weren't in the original submission. And short of ABP randomly coupling other projects with this one off their own back, I don't see how (or why!) they can just "resume consideration" of the project, since the original documents were quite clear in laying out how/why it couldn't adhere to the Climate Action Plan.

I think we can all agree (whether in favour of the project or not) that ABP's original "consideration" wasn't done right. But they approved the project nonetheless. Their "consideration" was completed and they actually tried to defend it up to the steps of the court. You'd wonder what their "consideration" is actually worth at all.

I know it's a lot of money but it seems obvious to me that they should have just coupled the sustainable projects with the ring road project the way the NM20 team did and present it as an overall.

I have no doubt the project would still be challenged through the courts by landowners though. But at least they could stand over it in terms of the Climate Action Plan.

Another point that nobody seems to be considering is just how much extra co2, nitrous, particulates and other noxious, harmful and global warming filth is bilged into the atmosphere as cars sit in hours of standstill traffic trying to get over the current bridge.

A ring road would be a huge net positive for the environment.

No. I'll try not to provoke or irritate anyone, but ultimately, the design and its associated documentation did not take the Climate Action Plan into account, and they chose to not try to defend it. Possibly worth going back through this thread a bit for the detail (I appreciate it's a very long thread with a lot of bickering in it).

But they took it to the steps of the court and then backed down with a mealy-mouthed "we didn't think the regulations would be applicable because they were new". I don't know the inside story but I'd assume they had a lot of the design or documentation done by the time they heard about the Climate Action Plan and didn't revise the design or documentation to suit because of the cost/effort of doing so.

Yes - existing plans with revised projection usage no's based on EV take up. Am pretty sure the MODAL share stuff is not changing.

This has always been a big weakness with this overall project. The so called "freed up space" that the local politician's now go on about that there are no concrete plans for.

The two Council's are now trying to shoehorn elements of a so caled 2016 Galway City Transportation Study into the equation - but they have done SFA since 2016 on implementing basic elements of this 2016 Galway City Transportation Study so as "hans aus dtschl" say's everyone on the ground in the City can see through that lark.

We have just had a decade in Galway City when NOT one extra meter of Bus Lane in the City was built since 2013(when the GCRR was announced). Parkmore Inbound Bus Lane will open shortly out on the County Border at Ballybrit but its a marginal improvement scheme on public transport front and there are ZERO cycle facilities as part of it - if anything has made it more difficult to access the IDA Parkmore West and East via bike.

On that contrary moycullen/Barna/spiddal would all be worse to cycle from with less traffic as the traffic that still uses the roads will be faster.

Right now you'd be cycling past stationary cars morning and evening because jams are that bad at rush hour.