Access road to Túr Uisce

The following update has been provided by Emer Carr, 36 Túr Uisce,  in relation to the proposed changes to the access road to Túr Uisce estate:

Hi All,

In relation to the road through the estate to access the school, I have been trying to keep up to date on this with help from some other residents. With politicians due over the coming weeks I please urge you all to raise the issue with them as it will affect all of us if this goes ahead as planned. Amenities in the area are very important but they also require correct planning. We are currently in a recession and traffic in general is lighter, please recall the traffic jams of a few years ago. If you have any correspondence or feedback you can send it to this email that was created last summer to track what they say (and what they go back on!). If you have any questions or I have left anything out please let me know via email at school@turuisce.org

Just as a reminder, a few of us met with the engineers, Shane Bowden who will be in charge of this road accompanied by Eoin Colgan on 16th Dec 2010.

• The proposed school is still only in the outline planning stages and is intended to cater for up to 800 students of both primary and secondary level - site is the building site on the left as you go up along the park. 
• The engineers gave us the map (below, click on the image to view a higher resolution version) in December showing the road straight through the green area on the crescent. 
• They were unaware of any traffic management survey that had been carried out on the area and said there were no traffic management plans in place for this development. Both agreed when the saw the entrance and the traffic jam outside at 8.30-8.45am this would compound the traffic problems but I have no written evidence of this, only what they said to myself and some other residents present. 
• The engineers also informed us that project under €28K cannot be objected to and the road building was going to come under this cut off. We were told several time in the past, this was only in outline PP for the school and we could always object if the plans were not agreeable to residents. Also in the current climate to be able to spend over €20K on a road to nowhere when full planning for the school is not submitted seems extreme. I am sure there are several other more urgent needs for the money.
• There was no indication of any further changes to the actual entrance of the estate which clearly is not designed to take this volume of traffic and may also in time become part of the bus corridor according to the links at the bottom of this email.

(click on the image to view a higher resolution version)

Quote from email from Cllr Brian Walsh on 14/7/2010:

At this stage the City Council has given outline planning permission for the development, however a full planning application with detailed plans will have to be submitted before any construction work commences. In this regard Residents of Tur Uisce are entitled to make an objection / observations regarding the proposed plan.'

Forwarded mail from Cllr Terry Flaherty on 14/7/2010 from Mr. Peter Staunton in the planning office

Hi Cllr. O`Flaherty,

Just to remind you that the current grant of planning permission is for outline planning permission. In this context the residents will get an opportunity at a future stage to submit observations when the applicant comes in for full planning permission. You are probably aware that there is a zoned quality bus corridor located to the front of the Tur Uisce Estate also.

I recently received these links from one of the canvassers for Niall O'Brolchain

• http://www.galwaycity.ie/CityDevelopmentPlan/pmap/mapfr043.html
• http://www.galwaycity.ie/CityDevelopmentPlan/pmap/mapfr042.html
• http://www.galwaycity.ie/CityDevelopmentPlan/pmap/mapfr053.html

I contacted Shane Bowden (engineer) about the continuation of the road onto Kingsvalley which was given with the links. His reply on 7/2/2011:

'As shown in the City Development plan, there is a road proposed through Merlin Park. However, this proposed road is intended to be restricted to buses only and an entrance to the school or a set down area for cars is not intended to be provided with this road. This road is also only at the proposal stage and with restrictions on funding would not be in place in the timescale that the Dept of Education require of Galway City to provide access for the school. For these reasons the proposed access road to the school is still required.'

Thanks,

Emer