Minister of State Noel Grealish has called on the Department of Transport to fund Galway City Council’s efforts to tackle the thousands of vehicles using Renmore as a rat run.
As the Advertiser reported last week, more than 30,000 drivers take a shortcut through the residential area weekly to skip busy junctions on the nearby Dublin Road – often heavily congested during rush hour.
Last Friday, local residents staged protests at Murrough Avenue and Renmore Park, to prompt local authority officials to reconsider cheap solutions they have suggested, including temporary chicanes, and bollards.
Organisers of the protests said the two pickets were well attended, alongside city councillors Terry O’Flaherty, and Helen Ogbu. A spokesman denied accusations published online that protestors questioned motorists’ reasons for driving through Renmore. “We merely asked people waiting in traffic if they wanted a leaflet,” he said.
Previous plans to reduce the attractiveness of Renmore as a rat run, proposed in 2021, including 32 changes to the neighbourhood road network favouring pedestrians and cyclists to dis-incentivise car drivers, was rejected by local councillors.
These included installing traffic lights at each end of Renmore Avenue, with more speed bumps, surface level changes, and an extra mile of double yellow lines across the neighbourhood.
In 2023, councillors voted to cancel this Ballyloughane Road/Renmore Avenue Active Travel Scheme because it did not directly tackle Murrough Avenue, and raised fears that rat runners would be forced “deeper” into Renmore.
“Murrough Avenue is a narrow, quiet street, but during rush hour it’s like being in the middle of Times Square with the amount of activity on the road. It’s making life a misery for local people,” said Grealish. “I know the Council did take some measures to slow traffic down by inserting a pinch-point that reduces the road to only one lane [on Murrough], but it’s doing nothing to reduce the huge volume of vehicles passing through,” he said.
“I’m told that up to 4,500 cars travelling into the city on the Dublin Road are turning at the roundabout next to ATU Galway, and cutting through Murrough Avenue and Renmore Avenue in a bid to save time.
“That amounts to an unacceptable stress on the people living there; they are genuinely fearful that a life may yet be lost with so many cars streaming through the area, using it as a rat run.
“It’s a lovely quiet neighbourhood, but the lives of people there are being plagued by this problem. – they include older people, families with young children and others whose quality of life should not be diminished by worries over road safety and increased noise and air pollution.
“I have contacted Galway City Council to urge them to take a serious look at what can be done to alleviate the situation, and I have also written to the Department of Transport to ask them to give whatever funding help they can, to support any measures the council may wish to take,” added Grealish.
