Releif Road for Kinvara?

Kinvara says No to ‘Relief Road’.

Galway County Council’s proposal for a ‘Inner Relief Road’ for Kinvara was overwhelmingly rejected by a public meeting organised by the Community Council on Thursday 21st of February.

Only three people of the hundred people or so attending the meeting were in favour of it. A small but significant minority felt it might be acceptable if it were re-routed.

The objections to the road were multifarious. But the core concerns were that it was not necessary and would not address the town’s main traffic problem – unregulated parking in Main Street. Exiting the town at Dunguaire cottages would cut the Castle off from the town and direct tourists and the business they bring away from the town.

The road is to be financed by investors developing the sites along it. This, it was felt, would result in random and sprawling residential estates set away from the town on its southern reaches.

Concerns were also expressed that it divided farms and entailed the demotion of farm buildings and houses currently under construction on the Gort Road.

Over and above this, however was the strongly voiced view that the proposal had been presented as a ‘fait accompli’, had been drawn without consultation with those it affected and that it breeched proper planning procedures.

The Community Council will be pressing GCC to withdraw the proposal and, failing that, lobbying local councilors to reject it when it comes up for approval in April. But the meeting and local councilors attending it stressed the importance of individuals making their feeling clear directly to the Council. Correspondence should be address to Mr J. Morgan, Director of Services, GCC, Prospect Hill, Galway.

There is now a only fortnight to lodge objections to the plan and, if adopted, there will be no further opportunity to appeal against it - to, for example, Bord Pleanala.



How to oppose the Kinvara Inner Relief Road

This proposal is being progressed under Part 8 of the Planning and Development regulations 2002. The County Manager will consider all the observations and objections submitted over the next three weeks. She will then make recommendations to either drop, amend or approve it. This will be considered by the County Council. Its councillors will vote to adopt, modify, refer back or reject her recommendations. If approved there will be no further opportunity to get the plan rejected or modified. That will be it.

The Community Council will make its own detailed objection to the proposal. But success in getting the proposal rejected or modified will depend not just on the persuasiveness of the arguments presented but, crucially, on the number of people making a submission. So it is very important that everyone does just that. These do not have to be detailed, long or technical. Just make your concerns clear in your own way. Your letter should be addressed to the Secretary, Galway County Council, Prospect Hill, Galway and sent as soon as possible.

Some points you may wish to make are listed below. Use these, as you will, but do add your own. If you are directly effected be specific.

1. There has been no consultation about the relief road with the community at large or those directly affected. It is a road that at this stage of town’s development is not needed and is detrimental to the town’s future development.
2. It forms no part of the Kinvara Local Area Plan (LAP) or the County Plan. The local communities own plan, the Integrated Area Plan (IAP), specifically rejected it.
3. The road starts and finishes within the village. If it is to provide the effective traffic relief that the Council deems necassary, it should have been routed around the outskirts of the town not from within the town’s borders.
4. The road purpose is to ‘reduce congestion in the town’. What congestion there is in Kinvara is the result of unregulated parking rather than the weight of through traffic. This could be addressed more cheaply and effectively by the provision of a public car park as proposed in the LAP and IAP and proper traffic management.
5. It is has been drawn up without the benefit of the traffic management survey promised by the LAP. So it is ill informed. Most traffic may not use it. Those familiar with the area may not choose to take a longer route where they know they will be held up by traffic lights. So it could be one of the quietest roads in Ireland used mainly by tourist and so depriving the town of passing trade.
6. The road is to be financed by developers not the National Road Authority. So it will have to be accompanied by building around and along it and thus open up some 100 acres or more for development. This will result in a loop of suburban estates set back and away to the south of the town. This is exactly the kind of suburban sprawl that the IAP and LAP seek to avoid.
7. It puts at risk the basic guiding principle of the IAP supported in the LAP, from which no one in Kinvara or the Council has ever dissented, that the town’s population should not more than double over ten years. There is already more than enough zoned land adjacent to the town to achieve this.
8. A key objective of both the IAP and the LAP is to draw the castle closer to the town so that the town benefits from the trade tourists bring. By exiting the road at Dunguaire cottages, this proposal does the exact opposite. At both ends, the road runs from within the town. If the Council is assuming population and traffic growth is sufficient to justify a relief road then it should go round it.
9. The site where the ‘relief road’ leaves the N67 in the east end of the town is, arguably, the best site in Kinvara. Under this proposal it will lost to a junction and/or roundabout. It is part of one of Kinvara’s glories - the unfolding vista of the town and the bay as you approach from the east and no place for roundabouts, traffic lights and major junctions.
10. The proposal involves the demolition of a number of houses currently under construction. Land over which part of this road is routed was given planning permission for substantial residential development last autumn – at the same time, presumably, as the plans for the road were being drawn up. The road divides farms, involves the demolition of their outbuildings and blights some residences, two of them at the road’s junction on the western side of town, very severely. All this could be avoided if the road was routed more sensitively
11. If money is to be spent on roads in the area, it should be used to improve the road between Ballindereen and the Clare border. The project will appropriate Kinvara’s share of the developer’s levy and thus built at the expense of the urgently required public facilities proposed in both the LAP and IAP.

Kinvara Community Council
Contacts. Maria Hannigan 0868170107. Richard Broad 637631