City Hall and the gardaí need to focus on what can be achieved instead of what cannot be done in dealing with the serious problem of traffic congestion in Galway.
This is the view of the Mayor of Galway Hildegarde Naughton following a meeting with council officials and gardaí which she felt “was not successful in finding any solution to alleviate daily peak time traffic congestion throughout the year”.
As a result she has called for a special meeting of all 15 city councillors to take place on Monday in City Hall at 7pm to come up with solutions.
“At Monday’s special meeting I want solutions,” she told the Galway Advertiser, “I want to hear want can be done and I’m not interested in hearing what can’t be done.”
The meetings have arisen following last weeks traffic congestion which was some of the most serious ever seen in the city, with some motorists experiencing two hour delays on certain roads.
Mayor Naughton’s original meeting was with city manager Joe O’Neill, director of services for transport Ciarán Hayes, senior engineer Joe Tansey, Garda Superintendent Marie Scahill, and Sgt JJ Burke.
She has accused both the officials and the gardaí of “avoiding working on a solution” to alleviate peak time traffic congestion.
“I challenged the officials and the gardaí to find a solution to alleviate day to day peak time traffic congestion,” she said, “but they made various excuses for not addressing the crisis and preferred to divert discussion to a lack of resources and long-term infrastructural solutions.”
The Fine Gael Mayor believes that while long term plans and goals are important a co-ordinated traffic management plan between the Galway City Council and the gardaí to deal with traffic congestion and to keep traffic moving at peak times is necessary on an all year round basis.
“We need an outer city bypass and other infrastructural measures to deal with the increased traffic volumes,” she said, “but I want to make it clear that the special meeting on Monday is about dealing with the daily peak time traffic congestion we have been experiencing for years.”
However Ciarán Hayes has challenged the Mayor’s assertions saying “it is not the case” that the council and gardaí are “avoiding” seeking solutions.
“At the meeting both the gardaí and the council put forward measures that are in place to deal with such occurrences,” he said. “We also outlined the almost daily consultation that takes place between council and gardaí relating to traffic management for events like Ironman, Streets of Galway, the races, road closures, and the location of bus stops and taxi ranks, so it is disappointing that she would make these allegations.”
The Mayor’s party colleague councillor Pádraig Conneely has also been critical of City Hall regarding traffic management this week, describing plans to visit the Dublin City Council Traffic Control Centre today as a “‘honey pot’ trap”.
Councillors will be bused to Dublin from Galway at 8.30pm and return home by 5.30pm. Cllr Conneely feels the traffic issues between the two cities are not comparable and he chastised the visit as “like a school trip but without the visit to the zoo”.
“Dublin will be organised to show the best parts of its traffic control but that main roads leading out of the city are long straight roads with wide spaces between traffic lights and it’s easy to keep traffic moving on such roads,” he said. “It’s different to Galway and somewhere like the roundabout on the Headford road where there are a lot of exits from various places all coming from a short distance.”
Cllr Conneely has refused to take part in the trip.
