Vote puts brakes on cycleway trial run

A PROPOSED ‘temporary two-way cycleway’ along the Salthill Promenade has been rejected by Galway City Council following a marathon meeting on Monday night.

City councillors voted by 13-4 to reverse a decision made last September giving the go-ahead for the cycleway, following complaints from residents, businesses, disability groups and the emergency services. Cycling group had come out strongly in favour of the project.

Councillors on both side of the controversy agreed that the proposal on the cycleway had been one of the most divisive issues to ever come before them, citing instances of ‘abusive and aggressive’ phone and online correspondence.

Mayor Colette Connolly (Ind.) – a strong backer of the cycleway proposal – said that Galway city couldn’t continue the way it was going and needed to provide safe routes for cyclists.

In an effort to allay concerns expressed by the ‘The Blue Light’ emergency services (Gardaí, Ambulance and Fire Brigade), she put forward a recommendation that the ‘one-way’ part of the cycling proposal would be dropped.

This would mean a retention of two-way traffic along the Salthill Prom between Grattan Road and Pollnarooma West Junction – but a dropping of the one-way traffic proposal (west to east) between the Barna Road and Pollnarooma West Junction.

In a report presented to councillors, Senior City Council Engineer, Uinsinn Finn, said that the public consultation process on the cycleway presented two options for the project as well as a ‘neither/do nothing’ option.

Option 1 – allowing only one way traffic west to east between the Barna Road and the Seapoint roundabout – only received 246 ‘preferences’ from the total 6718 submissions.

Option 2 – retaining two-way traffic along the Prom – but providing only one way traffic between the Barna Road and Pollnaroma Junction, received 2,204 preferences in the consultation process.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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