Restriction on cars urged to ease city centre logjams

An Taisce warned this week that the provision of a ‘bypass road solution’ to resolve the city’s growing traffic snarl-ups was ‘unproven’ and would ‘in all probability not work’.

Last week, Dublin City Council outlined proposals to divert more ‘through traffic’ to orbital routes as well as improving facilities for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users in a €150 million initiative.

Derrick Hambleton, Chair of An Taisce Galway, this week urged the Galway City Council and the National Transportation Authority, to ‘take a good look’ at what was being proposed for Dublin.

“What’s proposed for Dublin has already happened in major cities like Madrid, Paris and Brussels. The core problem of more and more cars coming into cities has to be addressed – Galway might be a smaller city but the same principles apply,” said Derrick Hambleton.

He stressed that An Taisce weren’t proposing any kind of blanket ban on car access to the city centre but added that certain restrictions should be put in place during certain times.

However, Mr Hambleton said that the crucial aspect of this whole policy area was in the carrying out of a ‘massive improvement’ in the public transport service, not only in the city, but to and from the outlying towns as well.

“The key to all of this will be in the provision of a top class public transport system. As Galway has grown over the years – as well as its satellite towns – the public transport service has remained much the same.

“While €380 million is the estimated cost of providing Galway with its own city tram system, this has to be considered in the context of the proposed bypass costs, estimated to be in the region of €500 million plus,” said Derrick Hambleton.

He accused the executives of both Galway City and County Councils of being ‘hopelessly committed’ to an out-of-date 1970s ‘predict and provide’ model with the construction of more roads.

For more on this story, see this week's Galway City Tribune