Long-awaited Galway blueprint published

Picture Galway, Ireland, 2016 . . . with a new outer ring road, a fifth bridge over the River Corrib, an inland relief road linking the city to Spiddal, a new airport at Oranmore, and a new town of about 20,000 people named Ardaun to the east. This vision of the city is outlined in the long-awaited land use and transportation study commissioned by Galway's local authorities.

The blueprint, which has a price tag of £169 million, rules out the provision of a light rail network linking Tuam, Gort and Athenry on cost grounds. It recommends an improved bus service and the introduction of park-and-ride facilities on the outskirts to limit car traffic in the centre. This would include a "dial a bus" service in rural areas, similar to the taxi system, which would guarantee a bus every half-hour on certain routes.

Curiously, the delayed publication comes after the presentation of the city development plan; after the local elections; and only just in time for the draft waste management plan for Connacht and the western city.

Mr P.J. Rudden, of M.C. O'Sullivan, consulting engineers, who presented the waste management plan to Galway County Council on Friday, confirmed to The Irish Times that the choice of four potential sites earmarked for a thermal treatment plant - Galway docks, Castlegar, Brockagh and Coolagh/Ardaun - could have been quite different if his team had not had access to this study.

"It was fortuitous that it came out several days before ours," he said. "We were under enormous pressure to identify our sites for the plant, and though we were aware of the Buchanan study's shape, we didn't have details on the routing of the outer ring road. Two of our four proposed sites are located at future interchanges on that outer ring route."

The recommended shift of the airport to Oranmore has already revived the debate between Galway Chamber of Commerce, which runs the current airport at Carnmore, and the Minister of State for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. Mr Eamon O Cuiv O Cuiv favours Oranmore. The chamber says improvements at Carnmore are required in the short term, and the priority has to be direct flights to and from Britain.

An Taisce is reserving comment on the plan until it obtains a copy - something it was having difficulty with last week. It has been informed that copies cost £50 each - thus restricting the public's ability to comment, according to Mr Derrick Hambleton, chairman of An Taisce's Galway branch.

"This study was supposed to take two years and is already a year late. Many planning applications on the edge of the city went through before this came out, so one begins to wonder about the value of it all," he said.