It is clear that neither the executive of Galway City Council nor city councillors are willing to deliver available solutions to keeping small, soft, bodies of tiny humans safe when cycling to school. The debacle over a teeny temporary cycleway in Salthill shows the need for system change.
Because if either the local authority or the councillors wanted a safer Salthill, they would have delivered a cycleway already.
Blue badge, age friendly, and parent and child parking would be plentiful in Salthill and right across the city already.
Extra available parking spaces would have been opened already.
Enforcement of the law to combat delinquent parking in residential areas would be happening already.
Safe alternatives to the private car for short journeys, to improve health and alleviate traffic, should be available already.
These problems are not new, but this debate has shone a light on how little interest the local authority appears to have in solving them
Concerns
.
Of course there were concerns. Many were predictable. So why did the council propose options that seem almost designed to pit communities against each other?
Why was there no pre-design engagement with access groups and emergency services?
The truth is that all concerns raised to date have solutions available. Solutions that have been applied elsewhere in Ireland and overseas with success. These solutions were ignored by our council and our councillors.
At Monday’s meeting, councillors hid behind concerns of emergency services.
We can say hid, because Mayor Colette Connolly’s proposed changing the plan by removing the Knocknacarra connection. She proposed a compromise that would have allowed a cycleway from Grattan Road, ending at Blackrock. That addressed both emergency service and traffic access issues. Problem solved, you would think, but councillors still voted against it.
Odd
.
Now, taken aback by the public outcry in the aftermath, councillors are suddenly very interested in the Bearna Atkins Report from 2017. This is odd.
Mayor Connolly’s proposed route amendment from Grattan Road to Blackrock is almost identical in design to this section in the Atkins report. The cycleway could have been a trial to a permanent solution. So, why vote against the Mayor’s amendment?
The Atkins Report was never shown to councillors at council. Chief executive Brendan McGrath and senior engineer Uinsinn Finn decided, quietly and without debate, that it could not proceed. Councillors have had five years to hold the executive to account on this. Why no action?
.
We have learned that the people of Galway cannot trust the local authority to use their executive powers to deliver better facilities and councillors cannot be trusted to keep their word. If they can undo a trial cycleway, what else? What about big policies with huge budgets like housing and planning?
The Labour councillor voted to kill the trial, against the views expressed by the local branch, as well as against national party policy.
Local government cannot deliver national policy. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors declined to deliver their parties’ own policies.
The Green Party has learned that billions of euro and sound policy is only as effective as the person or persons responsible for delivering public safety.
Government intervention needed
.
We call on the Government to intervene, in particular Minister for Housing and Local Government Darragh O’Brien, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan, and Minister for Road Safety and Safe Routes to School Hildegarde Naughton.
Remember, not an inch of safe, separate, and protected cycleway has been built here in years. No pop-up pandemic cycle lanes as in London, Milan, Dublin, Cork, and Limerick. Not an inch since the Paris Agreement in 2015.
Local businesses say that they worry for the safety of their staff cycling to work, as well as their children cycling to school. Aerogen says that the expansion of Galway businesses is being held back by poor cycling infrastructure.
Councillors should be leading the public to make small, smart, decisions, ahead of the massive mitigations we need to make by 2030. Climate change will not wait.
Hundreds of people came out last Sunday for the Big Red Community Cycle, from six months old to 94 years young. It was the biggest ever community cycle in the city, all to support a cycleway in Salthill. People felt safe to cycle because we had a Garda escort.
Once again, delaying safe cycling is denying safe cycling. Councillors have yet again condemned families to dangerous roads. Shame on them.
Kevin Jennings and Martina Callanan are members of the Galway Cycling Campaign.
