It’s February 2022 and Salthill in Galway is at war.
Plans to introduce a temporary cycle lane along the promenade in the popular seaside village have been met with an unprecedented level of opposition.
So great is the anger that Galway City Council’s chief executive admits death threats against council staff have become “par for the course”.
After almost four hours of heated debate, councillors vote to abandon the project, leaving the vision of a cyclist-friendly Salthill in tatters.
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Fast forward four years and something entirely unexpected has happened.
After extensive planning and consultation, the council is preparing to unveil a new blueprint for the future of Salthill in March.
It includes a reimagining of the famous seaside community and incorporates flood defences, preserving historic sites such as the Blackrock diving tower, on-street parking and even the development of a cycleway.
And what’s more, this Salthill village and seafront framework plan has received broad support from every stakeholder across Galway city and the village of Salthill.
So what has changed? How has peace broken out?
When the temporary cycleway was proposed in 2022, Alan Curran was a local teacher and cycling enthusiast. Now a city councillor with the Social Democrats, he has seen first-hand the change in approach.
“The council didn’t speak to anyone. They didn’t speak to residents, they didn’t speak to the community, they didn’t speak to the businesspeople,” he said of the 2022 proposal.
“It was really disappointing. I don’t want to be critical, but the council themselves didn’t even come out and defend that project. It was like, ‘If you want it, this is it.’ There was no consultation on design, there was no feedback.
“It pitted people against each other. There was a lot of conflict here, it was nasty.”
Some of the strongest criticism for this proposed temporary cycleway came from the Village Group, an organisation of some 60 local businesspeople and other stakeholders from the Salthill area.
“At the very best it was ham-fisted,” said Pete Kelly of the group.
“It was like we were being told to ‘run along, do what you’re told and don’t be a naughty boy’. That’s the way a lot of people saw it.
“That approach gets people’s backs up, right from the word go.
“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, this notion of a cycleway through Salthill, that’s what prompted all the hassle.”
According to Curran there has been a “complete shift in the mentality” of the council over the past four years.
With the help of consultants Allies and Morrison, the local authority has taken a hyper-consultation approach to the development, and it is paying dividends.
“They [the council officials] are coming to the elected members, but also local residents, the businesspeople, all the stakeholders – they are getting them all in a room and having proper consultations. The way it always should have been done,” Curran says.
“After I got elected, I spoke to a lot of the people involved and I asked them were they still opposed to the cycleway. Their answer was really interesting, they said that they were never opposed to the cycleway.
“They were very annoyed that there was no engagement with them from the council prior to putting a plan in place.
“When you include people in the process you will find a way. There is always a consensus to be found but if you pit groups against each other, you won’t get anywhere.”
The new proposal would see a cycleway run from Blackrock at the northern end of Salthill all the way to the Spanish Arch in Galway city.
Once complete, this route could also connect to the proposed Clifden-to-Galway greenway at the University of Galway, via an existing active travel route, and would further connect to the proposed Galway-to-Athlone cycleway.
Salthill resident and cycling campaigner Gráinne Faller says the new approach is badly needed and shows “lots of joined-up thinking”.
She says the current situation in Salthill is extremely dangerous for cyclists, who are regularly “doored” or hit when parked motorist open their car doors.
“It is horrendous at the moment. You have this gorgeous seafront with a good wide road, on-street parking, you have the Prom and there is no safe space for cyclists,” she says.
“I cycle it all the time, I live in Salthill. I think it is madness to use a car in Galway if you don’t have to, the traffic is so bad. But I don’t let my children cycle it.
“Once you get to Salthill, there are big signs to say that you can’t cycle on the Prom. So you are on the road, and there are cars parked along the road, so you are caught between parked cars where you could be ‘doored’ at any moment, or fast-moving traffic.
“I personally know loads of people who have been ‘doored’ and have been lucky to escape serious injury.”
Eoghan Lynch, a senior planner with the council admits that a “different approach was needed” after the stark opposition to the 2022 proposal.
He believes the new approach has been challenging but ultimately very positive, both for local residents and for council staff who have had to learn to “do things differently”.
“We are not aiming for 100 per cent consensus, but we are aiming for a plan which is rich with the experience and the knowledge of all the stakeholders,” he says.
“It’s been a departure for us, in how we do things. It has had huge buy-in, not only from the wider stakeholders but also people in our organisation. We are asking people to do things differently.
“In a way, it’s been easy because the response has been so positive. There was some mistrust, based on past performance, and that is fine.
“But people have liked the concept, the idea of taking a step backwards before pushing forward.”
