With the required additional information submitted to An Bord Pleanála by Galway County Council, the Chief Executive of the City Council said the decades-long saga of a Ring Road for Galway has crossed another significant hurdle – with the next to be a public oral hearing.
Should planning be approved for the Ring Road, Brendan McGrath said he believed it was possible to have the €650 million project completed by 2025 – and said it would be possible to open it in stages.
“One of the good things about the Ring Road is it can potentially be delivered in phases. It doesn’t have to wait for the entire road to be built for part of it to open,” he said.
Director of Services Ruth McNally said this incremental approach would be important in several projects – not just the Ring Road.
“You might look at that and think it’s very piecemeal – a bit here and a bit there. But we are conscious that the city is very busy and even the smallest intervention is going to cause traffic. That is why we are doing things incrementally in different places,” said Ms McNally.
As reported in the Galway City Tribune last week, Cosain, the Community Road Safety and Information Network, obtained documentation which revealed a predicted 37% increase in CO2 emissions as a result of the new road – a figure from the Government-approved business case for the Ring Road.
However, Mr McGrath refuted this claim, arguing that the shift to electric vehicles would reduce this figure.
“Galway Transportation Strategy, the overarching strategy, is predicated on a principle of climate sustainability. It’s about giving Galway’s streets back to its citizens and getting rid of congestion. Getting people onto high-frequency, sustainable and green public transport.
“Under the Government’s Climate Change Plan, launched a couple of months ago, it envisages there will be 900,000 electric vehicles on Ireland’s roads by the year 2030. That’s the Government’s target, so when the Ring Road is built, most of those will be electric cars,” he claimed.
“The city centre becomes a safe place to walk, to cycle – a place where you will get your bus to wherever you need. Where you don’t have to be car-dependent and where the parallel works around reducing flooding, greening the city and the dividend from 2020 – I talk about transforming transport, but’s about transforming the city and how we live in the city,” he continued.
One area where works were already underway was the regeneration of the pedestrian centre, said Ms McNally.
“Phase two of Shop Street is going to be starting at the end of this month. That’s Eason’s to Lynch’s Castle. As well as that, we’ll shortly be starting an automated bollard contract as well. It will be a separate contract,” she said.
Phase two will be completed by early December, with another phase to be completed in quarter one of 2020, said Mr McGrath. The bollards will be completed at the same time, he added.
via Connacht Tribune http://bit.ly/35bIfnB
