Councillors have expressed fears that the proposals for speed limits and increases they rejected this week will come back to them unchanged, leaving Galway with little ability to create speed limits suitable for different areas of the city.
At Monday’s city council meeting, councillors rejected a new set of speed limit by-laws, which would have included a 30kph speed limit in the city centre.
A total of 19 changes were proposed - mostly involving increases in speed limits - but councillors were asked to accept or reject all changes as ‘a single basket’, which hindered their ability to amend or alter individual aspects of the overall proposal.
'A mockery of the idea'
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Councillors reacted against this, and pointing out that the road safety implications of the proposed speed increases outweighed the benefits of the 30kph zone in the middle of town.
The Green Party’s councillor Niall Murphy proposed an amendment that would include only the 30kph city centre limits and remove all other changes. Council officials said this was not possible as it was not in compliance with the guidelines from Transport infrastructure Ireland and the Department of Transport.
“This leaves no way for the councillors to make any changes,” said Cllr Murphy. “This makes a mockery of the idea that the speed limits are a reserved function where elected councillors have a responsibility.”
Flawed proposals
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Deputy Mayor, councillor Colette Connolly, proposed that the speed limit bylaws be rejected, Her motion was supported by 12 of the elected members with six voting against.
“The bylaws as presented were flawed from the outset,” she said. “They did not include a roll out of 30km throughout the city, nor had they a general policy of a safe 30km zone outside all schools, despite many submissions by school principals and the general public.”
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She gave as an example the fact that the Rahoon/Shantalla Road was left at 50km despite the location of a creche, primary, and secondary schools. It also left the city outer roads such as Lough Atalia at 30km.
Cllr Connolly also alleged that the bylaws “did not adequately assess” the 365 submissions received from the public, and that this “undermined the whole public consultation process”. However she said the current bylaws, which date from 2009, will have to be revised as they are “totally inadequate”.
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A second vote?
Cllr Murphy is concerned that the council executive will come back to the councillors with a proposal identical to the bylaws rejected this week
“If we assume the only changes they will post in the future have to follow the guidelines then there is no reason to believe councillors will vote any differently if they are faced with the same proposal again,” he said. “Galway will not be able to make any speed changes for these roads until the process of changing the bylaws is improved.”
Cllr Murphy is calling for a separate set of bylaws for the city centre which would allow councillors to modify the boundary of the 30kph region independently of any changes being made on approach roads.
