The Gluas

[gilberto_eire]

http://www.galwaynews.ie/4905-gluas-gets-goahead

GALWAY City Councillors have given their unanimous support to plans for a €200 million light rail system for the city, which has the potential to cut traffic by around 20%.

Consultants are set to be appointed later this month to carry out a feasibility study into public transport in the city and will be ordered to look specifically at the proposed new system.

It is envisaged that the GLUAS system — the brainchild of several city business organisations — could carry around 12,000 passengers daily on its two city routes at an average of €2.50 per journey.
According to city businessman Brendan Holland, Chairman of the GLUAS group, the system would offer 21km of light railway, which would have tracks embedded eight inches into city streets.

Very good move IMO,with the rising costs of fuel,increased congestion and the affordability of cars now everything will grind to a halt in 15 years IMO. It's just not going to be possible for everyone to have there own transport, so it's good the council have gone ahead with a more feasible transport system!!

[Macy]

Very good move IMO,with the rising costs of fuel,increased congestion and the affordability of cars now everything will grind to a halt in 15 years IMO. It's just not going to be possible for everyone to have there own transport, so it's good the council have gone ahead with a more feasible transport system!!

Obviously public transport is good, but feasable at €200m for 12,000 passengers a day???

[monutdfc]

A Monorail!

I was in Galway in the summer and it is the worst example of city "planning" in a city that could have been the best. From a compact centre it has morphed into an ugly sprawl of plastic clad retail outlets, supermarkets and apartment blocks clinging to the ring-road and the roads that feed onto the ring roads. Totally car-reliant development and it'll take more than a luas to sort it out.

[pete]

The Luas cost E31m per kilometre but E200m implies the Gluas will cost less than 1/3 of that. Even allowing for quicker construction it seems unwise as costs are guaranteed to rise.

[Dodge]

Maybe its a better time to be starting a construction project as it is most certainly a "buyers" market

I'd imagine it costs a fair bit less to build in Galway than Dublin too (with nothing to base that on)

[Macy]

The cost spiral of LUAS was a nonsense (although didn't it officially come in on budget ), but at the same time the Dublin Luas carries 150,000passengers a day.

As ever, the corrupt and crap planning is the problem. No density to really make these things viable, so people are stuck in their cars. And yet some would have you believe that corruption didn't and doesn't did any harm and fair play to them for getting away with it.

[mypost]

Consultants are set to be appointed later this month to carry out a feasibility study into public transport in the city

Jaysus, that won't take very long, to find it's unfeasible. There's neither the passengers nor the city population to make it viable. You'd need a city Dublin's size, and 20 million passengers a year to make it profitable.

Would be better off extending the Western Rail Corridor from Galway to Mayo, and on to Sligo and Donegal with that kind of money.

[gilberto_eire]

Jaysus, that won't take very long, to find it's unfeasible. There's neither the passengers nor the city population to make it viable. You'd need a city Dublin's size, and 20 million passengers a year to make it profitable.

Would be better off extending the Western Rail Corridor from Galway to Mayo, and on to Sligo and Donegal with that kind of money.

Why do you need a million people for a rail line? if there are 100 seats in the tram you only need to fill 100 seats.
There are a massive number of students here, you can be sure the majority of them will be using it!!

If the 12k use it per day that works out at around €21million per year in fares received, couple this with the increasing city population and that will rise. You've also got the influx of tourists for various events like the Arts festival, Races etc... hardly infeasible?
Galway was the fastest growing city in Europe a year or two ago(not sure is it now), why shouldn't we make arrangements for alternative transport before the city get's gridlocked(i.e Dublin)

[jebus]

Galway's not big enough for a tram in my opinion, neither is Cork or Limerick, any of those cities could use one, but the potential cost of devolpment, coupled with the cost of running, would far outweigh the profits returned I think

[eamo1]

Ive lived here in Galway city all my life.I use my bike to get around town as its alot quicker and i would absolutely love this GLUAS to be built.I think it will work,it doesnt have to be flashy,just a tram to get ppl from A to B without having to use the car.Im 110% in favour of this project.
Galway is a bigger city then Limerick yet gets less funding from the government then it and only marginally more funding then Waterford which is half the size(info from an edition of a local newspaper "The City Tribune" from about a month ago).My point being that the government could make up for years of underfunding of the city by setting aside the funds needed for this.

[pete]

Why do you need a million people for a rail line? if there are 100 seats in the tram you only need to fill 100 seats.
There are a massive number of students here, you can be sure the majority of them will be using it!!

If the 12k use it per day that works out at around €21million per year in fares received, couple this with the increasing city population and that will rise.

With the Luas I would imagine the state paid for the construction & the day to day costs must be piad by the fares + profit for the operator. I don't know if 21m is enough for day to day costs.

Dublin should not get everything but projects also have to be feasible. I would guess 12k a day is on work days & would be lower at the weekends. You also need good density near the line to get passengers.

One circular line would be better than 2 lines. Are there plans to join them?

[Lionel Ritchie]

Ive lived here in Galway city all my life.I use my bike to get around town as its alot quicker and i would absolutely love this GLUAS to be built.I think it will work,it doesnt have to be flashy,just a tram to get ppl from A to B without having to use the car.Im 110% in favour of this project.
Galway is a bigger city then Limerick yet gets less funding from the government then it and only marginally more funding then Waterford which is half the size(info from an edition of a local newspaper "The City Tribune" from about a month ago).My point being that the government could make up for years of underfunding of the city by setting aside the funds needed for this.

I shouldn't get dragged into another of these "we're bigger than you" yokes but the highlighted bit is based on massaged, circumspect and ultimately misleading statistics. Galways very own wiki page acknowledges this.

I don't know the ins and outs of your funding complaint (funding for what btw?) but if Limerick City is getting extra help these days then it's likely to do with repairing the damage caused by decades old decisions to lump every gob****e and loola from Limerick City, Limerick County and many from Counties Tipp and Clare into urban nighmare reservations on the fringe of the city ...owing to it's geographical location which helps create the massaged stats I referred to earlier.

Incidently we had a perfectly good tram in Limerick once upon a time and some moron took the time and trouble to rip the entire thing out.

[gilberto_eire]

I shouldn't get dragged into another of these "we're bigger than you" yokes but the highlighted bit is based on massaged, circumspect and ultimately misleading statistics. Galways very own wiki page acknowledges this.

I don't know the ins and outs of your funding complaint (funding for what btw?) but if Limerick City is getting extra help these days then it's likely to do with repairing the damage caused by decades old decisions to lump every gob****e and loola from Limerick City, Limerick County and many from Counties Tipp and Clare into urban nighmare reservations on the fringe of the city ...owing to it's geographical location which helps create the massaged stats I referred to earlier.

Incidently we had a perfectly good tram in Limerick once upon a time and some moron took the time and trouble to rip the entire thing out.

There was actually a Tram in Galway too, not sure how long it's gone but I've came across it in old pictures they put in the local papers at times.....

Why were these ripped up??

[pete]

Why were these ripped up??

People started to buy cars & it was seen as the way forward at the time.

In the 1800s we had trains everywhere as they were an attractive option to the horse & cart for long distances.

[Newryrep]

This looks to my goldfish like attention span 'Oh look at the shiny new trams we will have'

Consultants will spend a fortune doing a feasibility study including trips to Manchester, Nice and somewhere else nice/exotic on the continent. including photo ops with grining councillers

Report will say it is feasible but willl cost X amount

consultants will then be told they only have half of X amount so they need to redo the feasibility study

3 years and 20 million euro down the line it will be quietly shelved but resurrected every election time.

As was implied it is the Simpsons monorail episode . (except it will never be built)

[Ceirtlis]

They have a major problem to start of with if they think they are going to get anything near 2.50 a journey. My main thought about it is where are the lines going to go. I cant think of anywhere to put the lines out to the east side of the city, the options would be Bohermore, Lough Atalia, College Road, Headford Road. I cant see where you are going to get a line in there. I dont think it is feasible myself but I would have probably said that before the luas was built. But then again Dublins has a population of about 12 or 13 Galways.
Galways population is smaller than Limerick and less than half that of Waterford.

[pete]

I cant think of anywhere to put the lines out to the east side of the city, the options would be Bohermore, Lough Atalia, College Road, Headford Road. I cant see where you are going to get a line in there.

I don't know Galway at all but for light rail I feel you need to go through population centres for the entire line as it has many stops. It is not like a regular train hoping from town to town.

[brianw82]

People seem to be forgetting that home buyers and renters will snap up any and all properties around the GLUAS, increasing the passenger numbers. Any developments near the green line are very valuable.
I'm assuming that it'll go through Eyre Square, but the businesses there are just after coming through years of works, so it's unfortunate that they will (possibly, if it gets built) have to put up with more.

[NeilMcD]

I do not like this trend with all public transport projects that they must be profitable by themselves. The benefits of public transport far outweigh the direct benefits as there are loads of knock on benefits, as in getting goods around the country or around a city in more time and making other business more profitable.

I think we need to think outside the box on these things and the cost benefit analysis should look beyond the immediate benefits and costs.

I would not mind my taxes going towards better public transport a la the French and Scandanavian models. For too long in this country we are stuck with Thatcher type ideology and look at the state of their public transport system.

The panacea of the right seems to be privatise everything and as we have seen of late what do they do, they privatise profit and nationalise losses.

[NeilMcD]

There was actually a Tram in Galway too, not sure how long it's gone but I've came across it in old pictures they put in the local papers at times.....

Why were these ripped up??

Simple oil prices were low and the car was seen as the way forward. Now there is no point in slagging those at the time as hindsight is 20/20 vision.