Galway’s roads have become the nightmare before Christmas, according to councillors who told a meeting this week that more needed to be done to address “unacceptable” delays to public transport.

And while efforts were being made to better understand the causes of traffic, the city’s roads remained completely “over volume”.

At the annual budget meeting on Monday, Cllr Mike Crowe (FF) questioned if an upgrade the Council’s €1.5 million Urban Traffic Management Centre would have any meaningful effect on traffic chaos in the city.

Cllr Crowe was referring to confirmation received that the contract for the UTMC in City Hall, which includes CCTV cameras on most traffic light junctions in the city, had been extended.

Director of Services, Patrick Greene, said there was an engineer in the UTMC “almost full-time” trying to tweak traffic light sequences daily in order to improve traffic low.

“But they’re working against an over-volume of traffic,” he said.

These tweaks were milliseconds long, continued Mr Greene, but “the loadings [at junctions] are well over what the city is able to take”.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article and for extensive coverage of the City Council’s Budget 2024 discussions, see the December 8 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.