Business needs to rethink road strategy

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Written by Administrator

Wednesday, 08 August 2007

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Business needs to rethink road strategy
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I work in a sector where I regularly meet leading business and academic personnel - many of whom come from overseas - who are shocked at their inability to walk and cycle in safety to their places of employment, residency or leisure.

Too many of the progressive elements of the CDB Strategy remain unfilled including "implementing a sustainable integrated city traffic transport management plan, completing a study on a light rail service incorporating a commuter link to Oranmore, addressing vehicular traffic reduction, establishing a disability-friendly city, developing a safe city-wide cycling infrastructure..."

So even though the outer bypass was also mentioned in this CDB Strategy, surely the business sector that signed off on this document should ensure that the aforementioned sustainable policies are implemented first? If not, then based on recent experiences many of us fear that facilitating non-private car transport becomes almost a token afterthought. For instance, the brand new pedestrian crossings at the Kirwan Roundabout includes a series of unnecessary perimeter railings that are built into already narrow cycling lanes, thereby designing once again the cyclist out of existence; the relatively new Dyke Road-Quincentennial pedestrian steps structure excludes any cyclist or wheelchair access; the council's very own 'Transport & Infrastructure Special Policy Committee' (SPC) is only meeting this week for the first time since early November; the two local authorities have failed to set up a joint integrated transport authority.

It is a similar case with the Galway water crisis where we are told that the opening of a new treatment plant will provide the long-term solution to the water problem. It will do no such thing. This mindset will only allow pollution in Lough Corrib to continue unabated, destroying angling and water-related tourism/jobs and ignoring the sources of the problem i.e. inadequately controlled/unmonitored built urban/rural developments and failing to promote alternatives to existing land fertilisers. Look at Clarinbridge where present threats to the world famous oyster beds by new housing construction is not stopping pressures from vested interests to build yet more estates.

Yes, I want Galway to be the healthiest, liveliest, happiest, most educated, most economically advanced and most eco-friendliest city on the planet. But I beseech our business leaders to look more carefully at the content of the CDB Strategy to ascertain how this could be achieved and then become part of a re-invigorated united approach of all sectors of local society to create true progressive and sustainable development in our region. Otherwise we are committing economic and social self-strangulation.

Yours sincerely,

Brendan Smith,

Sandyvale Lawn

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