Galway City Council has revoked plans for a temporary cycleway along Salthill promenade.
Councillors overturned an earlier decision to support the plan, after concerns from local residents, businesses and emergency services.
After almost four hours of debate they voted 13 to 4 to abandon plans for the cycleway.
Tonight’s vote comes after a couple of weeks of intense debate around two route options put forward by council engineers for the temporary cycling infrastructure.
Almost 7,000 submissions were made to a public consultation process about the proposals, with 60% of respondents opposed both routes, with the traffic and access issues topping the list of concerns.
Emergency services also said that traffic changes would have an impact on access and response times, on the west side of the city and further afield.
Lobbying was intense and some of it went way beyond what could be considered reasonable. Apparently the meeting had been delayed because of a threat made to the City C.E.O. Some councillors had received abusive calls and emails as did their families. There are also reports of a number of false submissions having been made in the names of people who did not actually make submissions at all. Such submissions should be handed over to the gardaí for further investigation to see if it was part of an organised plan or just a few isolated idiots acting badly. Otherwise this tactic could lead to the undermining of our processes for public consultation and local democracy.
Salthill Services 