Galway’s traffic congestion will not be eased, or reduced, by the Galway City Outer Ring Road, it will only be exacerbated by it, leading to an increase in pollution and environmental damage.
This is the view of People Before Profit’s Galway representative, Adrian Curran, who has called on the Galway City Council to scrap plans for the controversial ring road, also referred to as the Galway bypass, and replace it with plans and investment in light rail and commuter rail.
A decision on the ring road is expected from An Bord Pleanalá in the coming weeks. Plans for such a road - first put forward in 1999 - have fallen foul of planning and environmental regulations in the past.
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High costs
More recently, the cost of the road has caused concern. In May, the Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, agreed that the final cost was likely to be “much higher” than anything speculated to date, while Independent Galway West TD, Noel Grealish, said the ring road will not cost €650 million as originally estimated, but is more likely to cost €1 billion by the time it is eventually built.
The costs associated with the various permutations of a bypass/ring road have risen from £103.8 million (about €130 million ), when the first plan was published in 1999 to €650 million for the current plan today.
However, with no road having been built, it ring road has already cost €35 million had already been spent on this project since 1999 - €14.7 million on the initial Galway City Outer Bypass — which was abandoned after a European Court of Justice ruling in 2013 — and approximately €20 million on the current project.
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Mr Curran [pictured above] believes that the money which could yet be spent on the ring road needs to be invested instead in public transport - to help reduce commuter over-reliance on cars - as well as sustainable infrastructure such as cycle lanes, greenways and walkways.
“There needs to be a dramatic reduction in emissions to limit Ireland's contribution to climate change,” he said. “Ireland needs massive investment in renewable energy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and a shift away from car usage to cleaner public transport.”
