M6 - Galway City Ring Road [planning decision pending]

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.

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.

The amount of CO2 released in concrete production is massive. And then you need to factor in all the other things needed to build the road. All the building material produce massive amounts of toxic chemicals during manufacturing. And think about all the heavy machines that'll be needed. They'll produce orders of magnitude more co2, etc. than a modern car. There's also the impact to the landscape from such a big project. Think about how much runoff is going to go into our water and particulate pumped into the air.

I haven't looked at the numbers but I'd bet that if we built the road and instantly abandoned all cars for PT, cycling, etc., it would still take a century or two to offset the environmental impact of building it.

Back on the topic of the resubmission, I'm betting the council will paint it in the same light of being beneficial for the environment by ignoring as much of the (environmental) cost of construction as they can and overstating the predicted uptake on electric cars (which I believe is far lower than previously expected).

Nobody cares about any of this. People just want the Ring Road.

It will remove extraneous traffic heading north and west of Galway and it will enable improved public transport and active travel options within the cordon of the RR.

Private car traffic between the Canals in Dublin has fallen by 35% over the last 15 to 20 years.

If you don't think that could have happened without new public transport options AND the M50, then you're off your rocker.

It shall be no different for Galway City.

Yes it would make a big difference but on its own it's kind of a sticking plaster or time bomb. Exact same as the M50 and N40. Yes we need them. But they are failing to function because of excessive commuter use. That's not my analysis of it, it's the TII's.

I'm not against this road at all, but by not coupling sustainable schemes with it (or by trying to couple distributor function with bypass in general!) they're dooming the project to a failure from which recovery will be a more difficult. People will choose the easiest transport mode (the only mode being facilitated) and the numbers will grow, to the point that the mode is no longer the easiest mode.

A simple one for you with my "crayons" out: even straight off if they said that part of this project would see the current N6 reverted to a distributor with pedestrian/cycle/bus/car each side, the whole thing might be possible to sign-off overnight as a sustainable infrastructure scheme. The additional costs probably wouldn't even be that large.

What on earth are you talking about? In your rush to criticize your preferred "villains", you've picked on some who actually approved the scheme! Save that shock jock stuff for facebook.

The scheme failed because the project team made a mistake. It wasn't some minor technicality, they tried to ignore legislation "because it was new". The scheme isn't currently being held up by greens, nimbys, etc…YET. It's being held up because the project team didn't resubmit yet.

And as an aside, plenty of us here think it might be subsequently held up by greens, nimbys etc when the project team resubmit because we expect them to resubmit more flimsy documentation. Blaming the greens, nimbys etc if/when that happens will be like blaming the police when you get caught speeding. Why not just do it right!

Edit: in terms of ABP being "like some supreme council of the elders", I'd settle for them doing their job to be bluntly honest. Because they've been caught rubber-stamping so far.

Afraid it might actually work?

The Bus Gates could be done pretty quickly on College Road and Salmon Weir Bridge if the will was there.

Would certainly help improve scheduling and reliability of public transport in the City.