TRAFFIC

The traffic in Galway is terrible across the board and shows no signs of improving any time soon. As students and workers are being pushed further into the environs of Conamara South due to lack of housing in Galway City, the bus services are well subscribed to the point where buses are often full by the time they reach villages closer to Galway city, eg. Furbo, Barna, Moycullen.   This has created a situation where students and workers are forced to drive into the city for classes and work, adding to the already terrible traffic congestion on our roads and to a shortage of parking on University and Hospital campuses as well as other parts of the city. The public transport infrastructure in Conamara South must be improved. In the short term, I would like to build on the current infrastructure to provide better interconnection between villages and towns as well as improving connections to and from Galway City by increasing the frequency of buses and extending the hours to include nightlinks out to Carraroe and Oughterard.  As well as that, I would really like to look at why so many people are on the roads in the first place. Many households throughout the region now have the benefit of reliable broadband, if not fibre optic broadband. We saw during the early stages of the pandemic that many people could work from home and even experienced a better work-life balance by doing so. If elected, I would like to work with employers and third level institutions to develop incentives to facilitate people who can and wish to do their job/classes remotely, to do so. This would help to reduce the environmental and carbon footprint of students, workers and employers alike.

Long-term, I want Galway County Council to plan for and build a rail corridor connecting North and South Conamara to Galway City and the broader national rail network.

The Galway By-Pass/Ring Road has been promised by Galway City and County Councils for 25 years. We are now a quarter of a century into the 21st century and it is evident that more roads and more cars is not only a bad thing for our air quality and health, but as of 2019, the cost of running a family car for a year averaged €10,691. These costs are not going to go down and it is unfair to place the burden of expensive individualised transport costs on people, especially as housing costs, childcare costs, utilities costs and food costs continue to rise.  Galway County & City Councils must urgently plan for and build public transport infrastructure including trains, trams, buses and safe active travel networks. 

From my own experience of growing up in the area, I know that a significant amount of traffic is caused by the school run. It is quite amazing to me that not a single Secondary School exists between Galway City and Furbo or Moycullen despite the ongoing and projected growth in the population of this area. A secondary school is urgently needed for this area. Children should not have to spend hours of their day commuting to and from school. This is a total failure in public planning. It is also shocking to me that Bearna Primary School (Scoil Sheamais Naofa) has not improved and looks even worse than it did when I left it 22 years ago. I understand that it is not the remit of local authorities to fund schools, however I think Galway County Council could step in under the remit of sanitation, workplace safety, public safety and traffic management to ensure that it and other schools across the region are up to code and provide safe environments for children. And where problems are identified, the Council should demand and oversee improvements or facilitate a move to greenfield sites.

Schools should be safely accessible to children by walking and cycling. The fact that most primary and secondary schools in Conamara South are situated on busy roads means that investment must go into building and maintaining safe active transport infrastructure whether adjacent to existing roads or on a separate route. I also want to work towards connecting back roads, villages and towns throughout the county with safe active transport infrastructure. This needs to be prioritised ahead of leisure cycling infrastructure.