Consultants to move bypass for Claregalway a step closer

By Declan Tierney

There has been significant progress on the Claregalway bypass project with consultants having been appointed by Galway County Council to approve the final design of the five kilometre stretch which will end the gridlock in the village.

With news of the Gort to Tuam motorway being halted indefinitely, the focus of attention will invariably turn to the Claregalway project, which is now expected to get priority over the coming months.

And it is possible that the compulsory purchase orders for the lands required to construct the road could be issued by the middle of this year if the project takes on a priority status.

Possibly the most annoying aspect to the whole project for those who have been campaigning for it is that if the land owners along the proposed route of the bypass had collectively agreed to sell their lands when approached more than five years ago, it would have been constructed by now.

The bypass will stretch from Kiniska on the Tuam side of Claregalway to Cregboy on the Galway site and it would also involve the provision of a new bridge over the River Clare.

It is estimated that the whole project would cost in the region of €15 million – some €10 million less than it would have costed five years ago.

Galway West TD Noel Grealish said that it now made sense to focus every bit of attention on the Claregalway bypass in view of the fact that there were serious doubts about the M17/M18 motorway proceeding within the next few years.

“There is no reason why this project could not start in early 2012 since the funding is there. With the motorway in jeopardy, this has to get priority and I will be ensuring that it moves along at a steady pace,” Deputy Grealish added.

Senior roads engineers agree that the N17 Tuam to Galway road is suited to a capacity of 13,800 vehicles a day but currently there are, on average, 27,000 vehicles passing through Claregalway on a daily basis.

During the winter freeze, this number increased to 33,000 vehicles because of the reluctance of motorists to use the traditional rat runs which were quite dangerous at the time.

It had been argued by the two Fianna Fáil Galway West TDs that the Gort to Tuam motorway would effectively become the bypass for Claregalway and there was no need to build an inner relief road.But Senior Roads Engineer with Galway County Council, Martin Lavelle, recently disagreed with this by saying that there was still a need for a road to take large volumes of traffic away from the village centre.