LAST UPDATE | 10 Feb 2022
YOU MAY HAVE heard about the temporary Salthill Cycleway in Galway. It’s proposed to be a 3km stretch along Galway’s iconic promenade – a place where currently very few people cycle because to do so means negotiating parked cars on one side, and moving traffic on the other. It is always stressful and always dangerous.
But the setting; the hills of the Burren change colour depending on the mood of the ocean and sky. It’s a south facing bay so looking out from the prom, the sun comes up on your left and goes down on your right, always over the sea. It’s completely gorgeous.
The intention to install a temporary Salthill Cycleway was approved by all but one of the Galway City Councillors in a vote last September. The plan was for a two-way temporary cycleway along the coast for six months. A perfect way to see what works.
Positive changes
The overwhelming positivity seemed to herald a sea-change, a shift towards a safer, healthier, greener Galway.
The cycleway period is due to start next month. A recent consultation process on the plan attracted 7,500 submissions from members of the public – 7,500 is massive, by the way. An enormous level of engagement.
We don’t yet know the results of that process.
We do know that in their submissions, many people suggested simple fixes to concerns raised about the plan. Increasing accessibility and Blue Badge parking for example, and alternative solutions for a controversial section at one end of the track that would have impeded two-way vehicular access. Ideas and solutions that could be incorporated to improve the existing plan.
But none of that matters. Because at the very last minute, before the consultation results are in, the councillors have put forward a motion intending to withdraw their September support of the plan.
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a vote to scrap the Salthill Cycleway.
The motion isn’t to amend or improve the cycleway. The motion is to end it.
If that happens, the 7,500 submissions and solutions therein, don’t matter.
The two-year process to get to this point doesn’t matter.
The €1m of funding available for the cycleway doesn’t matter.
The temporary nature of the plan – a perfect way to learn and improve – doesn’t matter.
That Galway badly needs safe cycling infrastructure, doesn’t matter.
The overwhelmingly positive evidence from research conducted on similar active travel measures in Ireland and internationally, in terms of people, business and even access for emergency services doesn’t matter.
That Galway City Council has not installed even one inch of new, segregated, protected cycling infrastructure in years, despite all the mobility funding available for active travel, doesn’t matter.
None of it matters.
Flawed plan, but a start
It’s hard to disagree with the view that the Council Executive’s plan for the temporary Salthill Cycleway, its communication around the plan, and its commitment to the project was unbelievably poor. But any improvement, however temporary, is better than the status quo.
No change, in this case, is more than stasis. No change is a huge step backwards. What now? This is part of a pattern. During the pandemic, when other cities stepped up, Galway City Council didn’t install a single piece of new, segregated and protected cycling infrastructure.
It did some things. For example, it resurfaced some cycle lanes, it installed some bollards along some existing cycle lanes and outside a national school. It also conducted works and rebranded popular walking routes as a shared cycling/walking space.
But we saw nothing even touching the ambition required to bring about the badly needed modal shift in the city. Now, if the councillors call a halt to the Salthill Cycleway on Monday, it begs the question, what will it take?
The coast road isn’t safe to cycle. Is that okay? I ask this, knowing that I hate when my children want to cycle with me, especially on that road. My 11-year-old son tried it once. Being too close to cars on the way to football training turned him off completely. He didn’t ask again and I’m relieved he didn’t. It was too dangerous.
I now stretch to cycling with the kids sitting on the back of our cargo bike. It’s still stressful, but at least they won’t wobble into the path of a car that’s too close. The Salthill Cycleway plan is temporary and it looks like even that is a step too far for some.
Galway should be leading the way, but instead, we watch as Dublin City, Fingal, and Dún Laoghaire have been transformed, Limerick has a new cycleway on a major bridge used every day by children cycling to school, Cork has made streets car-free and installed two-way cycleways in the city centre. How are we being left so far behind? Galway is the birthplace of the School Cycle Bus movement. People cycle here, despite everything. The lack of ambition is bewildering.
Climate crisis
This obstruction of progress is happening all over the country. All the Government legislation and funding in the world will not make a difference if Council Executives and public representatives, can remain so staunchly indifferent to active travel, without consequence.
When it comes to the Salthill Cycleway, apart from a few noble exceptions, Galway City Councillors appear happy to wait for as long as it takes, for some other plan. A perfect plan, for sometime in the future. Ten years, 20 years’ time is soon enough.
All of the people who have a say here, councillors and those on the executive, will protest that they support safety and cycling and active travel – it is difficult to find any opponents of active travel in Galway – but words will not work this time, it’s action that matters.
The safety of people on bikes matters. Giving people safe alternatives matters. Galway is a city being strangled by traffic. We are living through a climate crisis, in real-time, not a decade from now, but right now. We do not have the luxury to wait for the perfect cycleway plan, it doesn’t exist, because change, by its very nature, is painful, and not everyone will be happy. That’s what change means.
The thing is we have done this before. Look at the pedestrianisation of Shop Street, Galway’s main thoroughfare in 1998. Many were opposed. It took vision, courage and leadership, but none of us would go back to the way it was. This is the same kind of change.
We must provide people with transport options beyond their cars because we cannot continue as we are. The Salthill Cycleway is more than a chance to try out 3km of protected infrastructure in a key location. It’s a chance for Galway to try a different way of living.
Galway City Councillors have a chance on Monday next to employ some modern, pragmatic thinking. We have been talking about a Salthill Cycleway for a full two years now. It shouldn’t be this difficult. I am pleading with them to take on board the suggestions that come from the consultation process and grasp this important opportunity to make Galway a more sustainable, people-centred city.
Gráinne Faller is a communications consultant and a former journalist. She lives in Galway with her family and likes using the bike instead of the car. A community cycle to support the Salthill Cycleway will be happening on Sunday the 13 February at 11.30 am.
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