Galway bypass to be built by 2020

Cars could be travelling along the new city bypass by 2020, according to Arup, the consultants driving the N6 Galway City Transport Project.

Under the most optimistic projections, and barring any hiccups, delays or court challenges, associate director of Arup, Eileen McCarthy, said construction could start in 2018, with a “really optimistic” completion date of 2020.

She said Arup hopes to publish Environmental Impact Statements and Compulsory Purchase Orders in the first quarter of next year, with an oral hearing by An Bórd Pleanála in the middle of 2016. She hoped planning would be cleared and contractors engaged in 2017 with a view to starting the following year.

At a briefing in Pillo Hotel yesterday, Ms McCarthy unveiled the long-awaited emerging preferred route, an amalgam of the six colour-coded routes published earlier this year. The route was first revealed exclusively on our website last Saturday morning.

The emerging preferred route (see page 5 for exact details) begins west of Barna village, crosses the river at Dangan, 300 metres north of Quincentenary Bridge and finishes at a tiered spaghetti junction at Briarhill.

Ms McCarthy said the project will cost €500 million will involve demolition of 41 homes as well as having a severe impact on 10 more homeowners who will be given the option to sell.

One of the additional 10 homes that will be “adversely impacted” belongs to well known Menlo resident Tex Callahan, whose house will be dwarfed by a new viaduct that is being constructed to avoid special habitats along the route, south of Menlo village.

“It is the right solution for Galway,” Ms McCarthy insisted of the project. She explained in detail the rationale for the route that was chosen – it had to avoid SAC and priority habitats, and have the least impact on homes. She outlined why the emerging preferred route is better than the ‘old’ Galway City Outer Bypass’, which travelled further north of the old route.

The emerging preferred route, at the western end, would “give the village back to the people of Barna”.

The road would be an effective Barna bypass taking some 10,000 cars out of the village daily but it wasn’t so far out west of the village to deter people from Barna from using it.

Other advantages of the new route compared with the old are: a new connection to the N17, which was not there in the old route; a new “back-door, high quality access” to Ballybrit and Parkmore, which was not served by the old scheme, to accommodate 10,000 people employed there.

For extensive coverage of the bypass, including our enhanced, easy-to-read map with route guide, see this week’s Galway City Tribune