Galway’s lessons from Cambridge

Date Published: 08-May-2008

LOCAL Authority transport planners accepted long ago that keeping ‘unnecessary’traffic out of town and city centre streets is key to tackling traffic congestion.

Retailers and businesses in central areas have also come to accept that inner city snarl-ups are ‘bad for business’.

However, one of the fears of owners of centrally located businesses is that if people are not allowed into town in their cars to shop they won’t come in at all and therefore passing trade will drop and business will suffer.

If the streets are clogged up and there’s a shortage of cheap parking spaces in the major urban areas, then shoppers will turn to retail warehouse stores on the outskirts.

In addition, shoppers buying bulkier items, such as furniture, or who enjoy doing the ‘weekly shop’ in towns and city centres, are often reluctant to leave the car at home — no matter how good the bus service is.

In many cases leaving cars at home is not an option for shoppers; it’s simply not practical to ask shoppers to carry their bags home on a crowded bus. However, Cambridge County Council and John Lewis, a massive British department store chain, have come up with a novel project that keeps traffic out of the English city centre but still attracts the shoppers.

A number of years ago, John Lewis wanted to develop a major retail centre in the heart of Cambridge, a small University city on the East coast of England with a population of more than 120,000 people.

Like Galway, it is a medieval city with narrow streets that were not built for large volumes of traffic and so planners were reluctant to give the development the go ahead, as it would generate significant increases in congestion.

The Council, however, realised that the shopping centre would rejuvenate the city centre, providing jobs and a boost to the local economy.

As a compromise, the Local Authority come up with an innovative partnership with the retail …………..

For a full analysis of Galway’s traffic and transport issues see this week’s Connacht Tribune or Galway City Tribune.