Gort – Typical traffic dominated Irish town. Can we not do better than this? Our towns and villages are so ugly.

30 comments

  1. For all the stick Dublin gets and the lack of public spaces and benches etc, this is what most Irish towns look like and they’re just seriously ugly and anti-people. Totally devoted to cars.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if we took a more European approach to our town centres?

  5. I was in Enniskerry a few weeks ago and had heard it was meant to be lovely.

    It’s just three busy roads with car parks on each side of them, not very pleasant to sit outside a cafe and have lunch beside that tbh.

  6. Westport in mayo is a prime example of a beautiful town ruined by being car-centric. Walking through the lovely streetscape inhaling fumes from the stop go traffic on all the streets with stop go traffic and parking both sides of the street made me frustrated. It could be so much better if they pedestrianized a good chunk of the town and reduced the on street parking.

  8. Dungarvan in waterford is the same. Great big market square in the middle of the town, they spent years working on it and finished it just before covid, they literally just changed the shape of the car parking spaces, threw in a pointless roundabout, and added a small few benches.

    Why can’t we learn from our EU partners that town centres should be car free and pedestrianised areas, the local shops and businesses would benefit so much from increased footfall and everyone would benefit from an open plan, spacious, planted, town centre.

  9. When I got into photography years ago I decided to try being a tourist and travelled to famous Irish towns to get pictures. The town itself is a waste of time. Every street is just polluted with cars. Either parked down either side of the road, or in a line of traffic.

    I just gave up on trying to get pictures of Irish towns.

  10. Tbh most of the public particularly older people don’t want it to change. They want to be able to basically drive into the shops. Also they randomly become massive disability advocates when someone suggest removing parking spaces.

  13. Great photos OP that really illustrate the point. Completely devoid of trees and greenery as well. Even just a few sections with plantings and trees would be a step in the right direction and break up the bleakness.

  16. This looks like the majority of towns I’ve seen in cork and Tipperary, see Macroom, Bandon, Dunmanway, Fermoy, Bantry, Cashel, Clonmel, Tipperary Town etc etc.

    All infrastructure for cars, no or very little public transport, no busses, bike lanes, pedestrian roads, green spaces. No or very little accommodations for those with disabilities, few pedestrian crossing etc etc. For a country with no car manufacturing industry or local car brands, one can’t wonder why the fuck we bend over backwards to accommodate cars so much. Its awful to see.

    It also shows how for a country with such dull weather, we seem to crave the colour grey. Grey roads, grey buildings, under a grey cloudy sky. No colour, no green areas etc. Its so so depressing to see. I fucking hate it.

  17. This is why rural towns are dying. We make them unattractive to live in for the benefit of people who want to live in the countryside and drive in. Then we’re shocked when those people drive to out-of-town supermarkets and retail in the town dies.

  18. I’ve thought before that the one way system at the square is a bit overkill, but closing one side and turning it into 2 direction road where it joins onto the Ennis road is going to cause havoc with congestion, car-centric square but I think it flows reasonably well.

    Not sure what can be done that can benefit the place that all parties will like given that it’s essentially a town all along one road with a one way system in the middle of it.

  19. It’s a legacy of why Gort exists as a town – look at it on a map and see how many different roads converge in that general area. It was a junction market town.

    Now with the motorway it’s not even that.

  20. This is what Irish people want. They want big wide roads to drive their cars down and loads of parking. Try and remove some of that parking, if even just to make the place safer and you’ll find out.

  21. Gort is bypassed, so no excessive traffic through it. Mablybe going to Loughrea via old road.

    Gort serves a big hinterland for shopping & other services, most of which have no option but drive there as public transport isn’t great, albeit it is on the Galway Cork bus route.

  22. A big problem with Irish towns is that some of them serve a very large hinterland and some days like market days the town used to be packed with cars. And if you don’t have parking spaces for the cars they will park everywhere. Hence the need for parking spaces everywhere.

    People wanted this type of layout years ago for a reason and it will need to change and change is not often not easy or quick.

  23. I just checked how long it would take to reach Dublin from gort using public transport right now (it’s 730pm, not late in the night).

    Fastest is 6 and a half hours but leaves around 10pm. Reaches tomorrow at 4:30am.

    That’s all you need to know about why our towns and villages are so car dominated.

    Edit: I just realized gort is on the limerick Galway railway line. No idea why I didn’t get a train route, probably there isn’t one this late.

  25. I used to get the bus there to Limerick and it was an absolute nightmare if I had to go to the atm first because it was on the opposite side of the road. Constant through traffic, junctions all around the square where the bus stop was, no crossings. Just comically difficult to get from one side of the road to the other, it was like something from Mr Bean. I can guarantee there’d be war if they took away parking though.

  26. Just Googled Gort, as I’m not familiar with it.

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    Looks like if you removed the parking you’d also remove the people. Doesn’t look easily accessible from any other mode of transport and would likely be another dead town in no time at all, if you tried to remove the traffic.

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    But sure I don’t own a business there, or operate from there, so let them Guinea Pig it and come to the fairly obvious conclusions that the anti-car brigade somehow can’t see.

  29. Cities Skylines just announced a DLC called “Plazas and Pormenades”. It would be nice to try to imagine what some Irish cities with more walkability would be like trying to develop this in the game.

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