Ugly bollards in Woodquay are symptomatic of Council’s attitude

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Forty-three. That’s the number of orange bollards you’ll count today in Woodquay.

A few are located at the sides of the street but most of them are slap-bang in the middle of Woodquay Street.

There’s more orange than your average parade to mark ‘The Twelfth’ up North – just not as tasteful!

Clumped together, each about one metre tall and semi-permanently attached to the road, the pin bollards are tacky and ugly.

You can almost imagine William Wordsworth stumbling out of Hughes’ after a feed of Guinness and declaring, dramatically: “When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of, er, gaudy orange pin bollards.”

Indeed, if you didn’t know any better, you could be forgiven for thinking that the person who conceived of them actually had a feed of Guinness beforehand, because they are so out of place – and seemingly useless.

But, of course, that’s not the case and they were put in at the behest of Galway City Council. Why, you ask?

A Council spokesperson, who correctly noted it was difficult to describe the area without reference to pubs, said they were installed last year, “in the ‘hatched’ area at the upper end of Woodquay (in front of McSwiggan’s Pub, etc.) to prevent illegal parking in the middle of the street and therefore to avoid congestion at that part of Woodquay as vehicles make their way in the direction of Eyre Street coming from the Caribou direction and/or as they come from Eglinton Street going towards Hughes’ Bar”.

It sounds trivial; in many ways it is trivial. But the 43 ugly orange pin bollards are symptomatic of a wider malaise at City Hall and officials’ attitude to solving problems. This reflects decision-making that does not have citizens’ needs at its core.

Illegal parking problem in Woodquay? No problem, we’ll stick in a heap of gaudy orange plastic to stop it. It would’ve been just as easy to install a ‘parklet’, a small on-street public seating and amenity platform that actually might enhance Woodquay. We’ve been promised parklets since last July, and there was a big announcement in November, but there’s still no sign of them in Galway yet.

The Council’s Covid Mobility Team was established a year ago this March, to facilitate social-distancing requirements by reallocating road and footpath space. It’s had mixed results – Cross Street’s pedestrianisation is a positive but space allocated for seating on Dominick Street was returned to car-parking. The big problem is a lack of ambition, something that didn’t stop the Cork, Limerick and Dublin local authorities from using the Covid crisis to improve the streetscape.

Why are ‘sure, they’ll be grand’ ugly orange pin bollards acceptable here. Why do we keep settling for less in Galway? Why, oh why . . .
For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.