Opposition to removing city roundabouts is mounting

Date Published: 02-Jun-2011

By Dara Bradley

The campaign to halt plans to get rid of Galway’s main roundabouts and to replace them with ‘intelligent’ traffic junctions is gaining momentum.

Galway City Council last night held a public meeting to allay fears about the proposal to change Lynch Roundabout (Briarhill) to a signalised junction – it is one of six roundabouts that may be removed and replaced with so-called ‘intelligent’ traffic lights, like those at the Moneenageisha junction.

But opposition to the €6 million improvement works, known as the Bóthar na dTreabh (N6) Multi-Modal Corridor Improvement Scheme, intensified this week ahead of the meeting.

An MEP called the proposals “absurd” while Galway Chamber also voiced its concerns about the plan while retired city businessman, Tom O’Connor this week wrote to all city councillors urging them to vote against officials’ plans to remove the roundabouts.

Already several city councillors and city businesspeople have voiced their opposition to the plan while all 30 county councillors unanimously agreed to send a letter to City Hall to voice their objections.

Michael Coyle, CEO of Galway Chamber, said the majority of members that attended a meeting with Council officials expressed serious reservations about the proposals.

Ireland North West MEP, Jim Higgins raised the issue in the European Parliament this week and asked if the Council is going to “bulldoze” through the proposals without responding to genuine concerns.

The Fine Gael MEP said he was concerned that one of the reason cited by the Council in favour of the plan is that it would improve the circulation of buses on the route.

But at present Bus Éireann do not operate services along the N6 across the Corrib, and in an email to Mr Higgins, Ray McDonagh of Bus Éireann said “there are no current plans to operate a city service over Quincentenary Bridge. This area does not have sufficient population density”.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.