I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how urban planning has been done and what could be done to make it better. In many ways the technical challenges aren’t all that big, the main problems are the political challenges that are around making any change to the physical environment or peoples behaviour. Even so given that there’s a lot that should be done to fix some of the issues we have. I think there’s a few issues with Galway that are relatively easy to fix if you could magic away the money and political problems. For example, much better public transport and building dense housing within certain corridors would provide needed housing while also allowing them not to require cars. If you planned a light rail system or bus rapid transport system along an east-west corridor and planned dense housing along it you could alleviate many challenges the city is facing
This is the rough idea I had where the red line is the transport corridor and the blue is areas alongside that corridor which are currently underdeveloped. The blue would be a mix of residential, office and commercial spaces with each being their own 5-minute neighbourhood. Currently they are either greenfield spaces or shopping centres where the majority is car parking
Another feature of Galway is the train line which runs to the east of the city. Currently there is one train station which has only a car park around it. There is potential for new stations and developments at multiple points along this line. More stations further east could be added with similar developments along towards Athenry.
This would mean there would be 3 new stations on top of the existing 2 in this section of the line and there would be 5 village developments. An interchange with the BRT discussed earlier would be at the city centre and around prospect on the map. Further stations could be added in areas where existing developments exist such as Renmore and Roscam.
The trains themselves would run on the existing rail line which would be extended to allow for massive frequency improvements, up to every 10 minutes at rush hour and would share the line with the Galway to Dublin and Limerick services. These new trains would just run from Galway to Athenry and back meaning there would not need to be many train sets to achieve decent frequency. Ideally the Galway to Dublin would bypass this commercial service and run at high speed to Dublin, a journey that should be completed in around an hour as opposed to multiple hours it is currently.