The golf course in Salthill is in a great location – overlooking Galway Bay. If you’re lucky enough to live in Salthill and are a member of the club, it’s only a short stroll down the road to the clubhouse. But why stroll at all. This gentleman is able to drive straight from house to tee – I watched him drive up from the club and take a left up Threadneedle Road in Salthill and home. Which sure beats walking.
Every August in Galway, just before Race Week, the traffic flow eases to a trickle as most of the city take their holidays. The level of traffic is usually light until mid September when the majority of people have taken their holidays and students and schoolchildren go back to school and colleges. That time is a welcome break for me. My commute means I’m trying to leave the car park on Merchants Rd (near Eyre Square) at around 7.30pm most evenings and, in summer, I get to scoot along the Docks without having to grit my teeth at all the sneaky overtaking and lane-changing of other drivers that characterises a busy evening’s traffic. This year, my teeth have remained ungritted. And not because Galway drivers have gotten any better. It’s just that there seems to be less of them.
It’s really only in the last week that I’ve noticed that traffic was really clogging up the roads and that could have been due to some roadworks and absolutely torrential rain [when the rain gets really bad in Galway, drivers seem to lose the run of themselves completely and city traffic grinds to a halt]. Maybe it’s just a fluke – I’ve been travelling a lot of the last 6 weeks so maybe I just haven’t seen as much traffic as last year. But it does seem that the amount of traffic crossing the city in the evenings seems less than last year.
There was an article in The New York Times during the week about how the amount of traffic [and therefore the income] using the toll bridges into New York has fallen as the recession begins to bite. I don’t know if the same effect is reflected in the few tolled roads that we have in Ireland. But maybe the result of hundreds of lay-offs in construction is beginning to be reflected in the traffic – I wonder has anyone else noticed this ?
Your picture today is perfect timing . . . I’ll be in Galway this Thursday evening for a not-unrelated discussion — Are we too posh to push? — with Galway’s One World centre and NUIG’s Environmental Change Institute. Don’t suppose you’ve noticed a huge increase in the number of cyclists by any chance?
Mary
I dunno. The Tuam and Headford roads are still as bad as ever.
Hi Mary,
Sounds like an interesting discussion. I’m not around during the day in Galway, so wouldn’t be able to judge on whether cyclist numbers are up or dwn. I suspect cycling decreases as the weather gets worse [and a lot of the summer cyclists are tourists]. Though Galway has introduced more cycle paths, many of them terminate at roundabouts, and I really wouldn’t fancy crossing a roundabout on a bike in rushhour. Also, there still isn’t many secure places to lock a bike – Irish Rail’s official policy to to provide NO space for bikes, and to remove and dump any bikes that they find at Ceannt Station. Which is why I drive (they haven’t bothered align with the buses either) How’s that for joined-up thinking ?
Smoke – I think the traffic jams on that side of the city will take more than a recession to clear – a plague, maybe.