A cyclists\u2019 advocate who objected to a multimillion-euro apartment development, mainly over the failure to include a cycle path on both sides of the adjoining road network, has failed in a High Court challenge to the project. <\/p>\n
Shane Foran, a founding participant in the national alliance of cycling campaign groups, now known as Cyclist.ie, sought an order quashing An Comisi\u00fan Plean\u00e1la\u2019s (ACP) decision granting permission for the 227-unit apartment development in seven blocks up to five storeys high, at Gort na Br\u00f3, Rahoon, Co Galway. <\/p>\n
The developer, Glenveagh Living Ltd, which was a notice party in the case, opposed the action along with the commission, which was a respondent. <\/p>\n
It was claimed, among other things, that Mr Foran had pleaded grounds in the court case which had not been raised in his objections to the plan before the commission. A number of resident groups and other individuals had also objected to the commission on multiple grounds, including traffic.<\/p>\n
In his arguments, Mr Foran, a Rahoon resident, said the proceedings \u201ccould have been avoided\u201d if Glenveagh or ACP had \u201cchosen to employ engineering advisers who displayed an understanding of the general assumption that cyclists expect to travel on both sides of urban roads and the reasons for this assumption.\u201d Having them on both sides is in accordance with best practice, he said. <\/p>\n
He said in his experience of the Irish Road Safety Audit, \u201cIrish educated engineers cannot be assumed to have an understanding of the literature, or practice of road design, around avoiding conflicts between motor vehicles and cyclists\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Foran said he has participated in several committees which had \u201cled me to a personal policy, as an active travel advocate, of treating Irish-educated civil engineers as being unsuitable to advise on the design of public roads until proven otherwise\u201d. <\/p>\n
He also tended to take the same approach with civil engineers educated in England, Wales or Scotland. <\/p>\n
Rejecting his challenge, Mr Justice David Holland said he formed the strong impression that Mr Foran was \u201centirely genuine, convinced and civic-minded\u201d in his disagreement with the comisi\u00fan decision on its merits as to provision for cyclists. <\/p>\n
But, said the judge, he never got mentally to grips with a number of issues, including the fact that the law makes the commission, not the courts, the final decision maker in planning appeals and the only exception is where the decision is in some way illegal.<\/p>\n
In his view, Glenveagh was not unfair in asserting that the \u201ckey issue\u201d in Mr Foran\u2019s \u201ccase is about a design choice … to provide a two-way cycle facility on one side of the road\u201d rather than cycle facilities on both sides. <\/p>\n
Mr Foran had failed to adduce admissible evidence of a flaw in the decision, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Foran should have made, but failed to make, many of the complaints he made to the court, to the commission, he said.<\/p>\n
He provisionally considered that there should be no order as to costs and listed the case for final orders next month. Mr Foran represented himself in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cyclists\u2019 advocate who objected to a multimillion-euro apartment development, mainly over the failure to include a cycle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[19620,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,1109,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-305292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-bob","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-media","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115964349245232785","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}