Councillors see red over pedestrian crossing – Connacht Tribune – Galway City Tribune:
No surprise to see @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy taking the side of the GAA hero and All-Ireland medal winner here. On this occasion you are right though, the clown of a Cllr seems to want school kids to have a longer walk to school so that he isn’t held up unnecessarily in his Octavia.
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It’s a disaster by all accounts. One in Ennis at the swimming pool is similar. Nearly killed a pedestrian myself a few times
€55k for a pedestrian crossing. Nice work if you can get it
€500 for the paint and signs, €54,500 for all the consultation, lobbying, ads, planning etc
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Paint a few hundred.
Labour a few hundred.
Lights etc a few thousand
Knowing someone in the council? Priceless.
Councillor Gerry Finnerty (FF) said he goes through the junction many times day and night and there was now a long tailback
People have had to leave earlier. Kids are not allowed to access classes because they were late going in
a local area engineer observed traffic at the location last Thursday morning for 45 minutes. Maximum queue time just before 9am was three minutes.
After 9am the queue time was less than a minute, with a maximum of six vehicles queuing at any one time
He wants this to be moved out the road to make pedestrians walk further and be put out because the lazy bollix can’t wait 3 minutes at school time traffic. Worrying about cars being rear ended. No such concern for pedestrians being hit by cagers
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What is the actual breakdown of costs for this? Is it possible to see?
There’s probably a lad with a clicker for a few mornings, some consultancy fees etc.
But how does it come to 55k really. Serious question
There could be a few things. Standard construction costs for one with a new school would be about 10-15k ex vat for the lighting columns and electrical works. This would generally have power ducts nearby, so no diversions, so this may have needed excavation through the existing path to get to the power. You then have road opening licenses and the stop/go costs during the construction. The road works then also may need upgrade with new tarmac either side and a speed bump pedestrian crossing with road markings.
Then factor in the works maybe being done by the council on hourly wages basis taking twice as long as it should and not done by tender.
55k sounds huge tho alright
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That sounds suspiciously low.
“I’m not a big fan of traffic lights”
sigh
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I’ve no idea Paul
I see red when somebody comes out with something like that. 
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Galway - they have a few lads with beards and everyone thinks it’s full of hipsters but mostly it’s full of troglodytes
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Do successful tenders for government jobs over a certain amount get put up on some public website ? I thought I heard this before …
Not that I know of. Any public funded works going to tender goes onto etenders as it has to conform to EU regulation and be open for all EU members to price. But the likes of this could be considered a local council funded project. It gets very messy when council work is involved.
But once it has been appointed, the details of costs etc don’t go up other then notification of the success tenderer. So for example, you’d never see a full breakdown of costs for a school or what it ended up at publicly
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Looking at the photo in the Connacht Tribune, it looks like they installed lampstands as well (pedestrian crossing needs to have street lighting). They cost c.€2.5k a pop. When you factor in design (and PII) costs, no matter how basic, to ensure compliance with the design manual for urban roads and streets, it all adds up. €55k is a bit on the saucy side though.
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How
The
Fuck
Is there vat on a pedestrian crossing??
Luxury goods shur
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There may not be, I don’t know. But there is vat on construction. Its when it becomes state funded where the bit of sorting between each sector becomes an issue. But for example, all school projects are quoted to include for vat which for construction is 13.5% (the supply of loose fittings etc is at 23%).