Friday 19th of April 2024
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road rage .....

‘The Cross-City tunnel's 50% discount ends today, and will
be replaced with a permanent reduction of just 17c. People had started to use
it because they felt that it was quite a good deal at $1.78. But now that it's
going back up, guess what'll happen, Cross City Motorway Pty Ltd? We'll stop.
It doesn't matter how much advertising there is. Sydney has made its position
to the operators entirely clear: with all due respect, we contend that it's a
bloody a rip-off. And we simply aren't going to use it. So there. We'd rather
sit in an interminable traffic jam, thanks all the same.  

Nor do we appreciate being
bullied into paying an exorbitant toll by road closures. A toll road should
offer a superior service at an attractive price. You don't just bully people
into using it. That's tantamount to extortion. 

It's not a good thing that the
government's decided to reopen the closed roads, though; with the possible
exception of the Druitt St dogleg which just seemed like a deliberate attempt
to be annoying. Making William St less trafficky and keeping cars off
Darlinghurst residential streets is clearly a good idea. Cars should
be bypassing the city from east to west on a motorway, the same way they do
from north to south. If they aren't, everyone loses: the residents, the
operators of an unprofitable tunnel, the government which is clearly going to
lose the inevitable court case and have to shell out even more compensation
than the contract specified, and above all the drivers who sit in bumper-to-bumper
traffic. Only Sydney could take a great idea and botch it so badly through
bureaucratic penny-pinching and mismanagement. 

These State bureaucrats are the
same geniuses that redesigned Australia's one world-famous building, the Opera
House, so that it didn't have enough seats to host opera profitably, and priced
ordinary people out of the market. 

We're at the point now, I
suspect, where the government should just buy the stupid thing – they're going
to have to shell up whopping fines as it is – charge $1.50 and hope they don't
lose too much money on the deal. At least it'll deal with the congestion, the
original point of the whole exercise. Except for the tunnel operators, who
foolishly thought they'd been issued a license to print money. Next time, do
your market research.’ 

Take That,
Tunnel & Ticket Touts

Roads and roads

Whenever i see these RTA rubber hoses that count traffic passing through on roads, I feel uneasy... I know that in some office somewhere the daily figures will be computed and "analysed" to prove a particular pattern of usage...

At times this counting can be right... most time it's wrong due to interchange of purpose.

Unless most other roadways are monitored at the same time, the exercise is quite pointless... and it can be false "analysis" even if all roads are monitored. For example for the cross city tunnel it is obvious that the purpose of traffic comings and goings into the city may make the cross city only relevant to a few commuters, even at no toll cost at all. May be in the future? Or for motorcades?...

Even if what number comes out on to the Anzac bridge is a large proportion of the number that has been measured going into the old King's Cross tunnel minus what used to go to the Cahill expressway and the harbour tunnel... it does not mean that the traffic is flowing in such manner. Some of it may do, but most intra-Sydney traffic is erratically criss-crossing the city for a purpose within then moving out...

Solution to traffic problems often exists in the chaotic nature of car traffic rather than in the streamlining of it which tends to congest it along some critical lines. Beyond this, it is better to provide faster alternative to car travel for single persons who come into the city for a 9 to 5 activity.

What is often lacking is pick-up points to public transport that are no more than a 10 minutes walk for commuters. Anymore time and the car becomes chosen over public transport. What is needed is fast reliable public transport that makes the commuting no more than half an hour (minus the ten minutes walk) to the place of work, even from a longish distance.

On this level, contrary to car travel, public transport HAS to be streamlined with more of it. In the mean time, a fast "cheap" form of taxi-bus could also be added to Sydney... These Taxi-bus would run along specific routes in several inner circles around town and inner and mid outer suburbs. They would be small privately operated buses of twenty seats maximum, most likely ten seaters, and be running with no time table at a frequency of 5 to ten minutes on the routes during most peak-hour time and quarter-an-hour at other times and half-hour all night. These taxi-bus should also deviate from the main route to serve a particular customer with specific need or is prepared to pay a bit more (double?) than the two bucks which would be the basic price of ticket to go anywhere on entering the taxi-bus... Just an idea I saw operate very well in some overseas places... short and sweet advertising campaign needed to attract the commuters on this system. These taxi-buses can also be run on hybrid electric engines fed from the grid and LP gas...

Thus buses coming from further away could become express and not stop on the smaller routes... Discount and combination of tickets can be used for people to catch an express bus further up the track...

Just a few thoughts...