A better future for our children is one that puts climate action at the heart of political decision-making. Locking future generations into car dependency and quite literally driving up our greenhouse gas emissions is the wrong thing to do, for our planet and our people.
I live in the west of the city and know only too well the traffic chaos. I believe too many politicians have been using it for their own election platforms, instead of being honest with us all in Galway. The Ring Road was never going to solve the traffic problems. It was only ever going to lock us in to more car dependency. The problems in Galway are in the city. That is the part that must be solved. It's time for a dose of honesty in Galway.
The application itself said that carbon emissions would increase drastically as a result and this is something that many involved in the planning application itself don’t seem to want to admit. It was never about ‘moving cars to make space for buses’, because it projected that car use would not go down.
So we would be stuck in our cars because when you build more roads, the research says that you get more drivers. The Ring Road was set to pour massive amounts of concrete right around the city and over time would lead to sprawling houses that would spread out at the far side of that road.
Those homes would be impossible to service through public transport as they would be spread rather than compact. That is the complete opposite of the National Planning Framework that calls for cities to build up with apartments, green spaces in the city, and public transport to get us around.
Let’s not recreate the bad planning decisions of the past in Galway. I have a vision for compact growth, where we build homes and businesses around public transport and not around a road. The city is set to grow and we get to decide as a people what this growth should look like. A vibrant city where people can get buses or, in the future if we design it right and I believe we can, a light rail system. A vibrant city where it is safe to walk and cycle to school and college.
Massive lump of concrete
Right now it is not and 30% of the traffic is children being brought to school because it is unsafe to get out of the cars and walk or cycle for many. That is changing and it must ramp up. This will happen much faster than building a massive lump of concrete. The road network we have is enough if there is enough public transport There will always be people who need to drive, and the road network we have in Galway is enough to manage that traffic once we have adequate public transport.
And that public transport is coming. The application for bus connects has been lodged and we have new bus routes being delivered in the county. Oranmore train station is being upgraded and the double tracking will be coming from Athenry. Many people ask why this has taken until now to do.
I ask this question too of politicians from across the political spectrum who have been TDs and councillors for many years. I strongly believe that they pinned their hopes on a road, a road that should never have been designed for our beautiful city. It was a political miscalculation.
