CITY TRIBUNE
Galway coach station parking row rumbles on
Efforts to return a number of private coach operators to the city’s only dedicated coach station continue as a dispute over payment for its use rumbles on.
Due to the dispute, a number of operators – including Citylink and GoBus – are collecting and dropping off their passengers at the roadside, creating what one local councillor has described as ‘traffic chaos’.
The City Council confrimed this week that it continues to fine coach operators for parking to the front of Galway Coach Station at Fairgreen Road – up to 100 buses per day are illegally parking at the station’s front door.
A number of tour operators have also withdrawn from the station and are stopping at alternative locations, as first reported by the Galway City Tribune in 2020.
The dispute centres on the fees demanded by the station’s operators – bus operators are understood to want a pay-as-you-go system whereas the station management is insisting that because its bays are booked up as part of the bus companies’ licence agreements with the National Transport Authority (NTA), they must pay for all the slots they’ve earmarked.
Galway Coach Station Manager, Oisín O’Brien told the Galway City Tribune that the station would not be viable if operators only had to pay for what they used and said once the NTA had issued licences on the basis that the station was the stopping point for a certain number of timetabled routes, they could not make those slots available to anyone else.
“We need €500,000 a year for the station to wash its own face,” Mr O’Brien said of their running costs.
In a letter to local councillors, seen by the Tribune, Mr O’Brien said Galway Coach Station had not refused any of the operators involved use of the facility.
“In fact, these operators have been issued with contracts for same, however, up to this point they have chosen not to sign the contracts and instead have made a conscious decision to operate on the street, with no action taken against them even though they are parking illegally on the street, and therefore, not in compliance with the terms of their licences,” he wrote.
Mr O’Brien told this newspaper that he was of the opinion that NTA was failing to ensure operators were complying with the terms of their licence agreements.
“The way it works is a bus provider makes an application to the NTA, for example to run 500 buses [annually] between Dublin and Galway. The NTA asks where they will pick up and drop off and the bus operators have two options – public or private property.
“The City Council provides permission to use public stops or if they come to us and say ‘we need 500 slots’, we confirm we can provide those spots to the NTA and they issue the licence with that information included,” said Mr O’Brien.
“The first two lines of the licences say the operator must comply with the terms of the licence and if they don’t, they are committing an offence.
“The NTA has the responsibility to enforce that. They are the licencing and regulatory authority but they’ve done nothing,” he continued.
Galway County Council owns the site on which the station is built and its operated by Head Space Group on a 999-year lease.
The fees for using it are set by the Council and according to Mr O’Brien, they had been set at €8 per slot in 2005, before being increased to €10 following a review in 2020.
The conditions of the lease stipulate that the station must operate 24/7, incurring costs that only payment for all slots allocated will cover, he added.
Mr O’Brien refused to be drawn on if the continued operation of the station would become untenable without the return of the operators, but said Head Space was ‘100%’ committed to its continued operation.
“We are committed fully to Galway Coach Station unless councillors or the NTA decide they no longer want a coach station and that would release us from our obligation,” he said, adding that he remained hopeful a solution could be found.
Chair of the Council’s Transport Strategic Policy Committee, Cllr Frank Fahy (FG) said every effort needed to be made to resolve the dispute as the current arrangement of buses parking haphazardly on the street was causing an obstruction and posed a threat to road users.
“I would like to see this issue resolved – the city needs a coach station and its not good enough for the city to be held to ransom because of a dispute like this,” he said.
A statement from Galway City Council said the local authority was aware of the dispute “between the private entities of the coach station and some of the bus operators. We have engaged with the key stakeholders and this is ongoing”.
“We are aware of the parking issues. Fines have been issued and continue to be issued,” stated the Council.
Citylink and GoBus were contacted for comment.
In a post on social media this week, GoBus responded to a query related to use of the coach station and said: “We look forward to a day when it will be resolved”.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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