Brisbane City Council and the Queensland State Government have gone nuts about tunnels. They’ve got one going in under Woolloongabba, they want to put one along Lutwyche Road and then out to the airport and they are even having one for bikes that will go in to the new Brisbane City Council Building! All this they say will ease traffic congestion in Brisbane that is already a big problem thanks to stupid 1960s Mayor Clem Jones and his idiot “freeways in a city are the future” idea. I suspect I’ll be saying the same thing about Campbell Newman and his tunnels in 30 years time.


Since I took a different route home today and went across the Story Bridge, I had loads of time to muse on this issue while waiting in traffic. Surrounded by semi-trailers looming over my little vespa scooter like vultures over prey, it gave me a shock to realise Pauline was right.

Semi-Trailers should be banned from the city in business hours.

How many times have you inched forward in your car and got in sight of the green arrow light only to see one semi and one car get through the lights thanks to the slowness of the truck. How many times have you got caught behind two semi-trailers side by side racing each other to be first but only succeeding in blocking 10 monaros behind them.

Give the trucks a city wide boundary which they can’t come in between 7am and 7pm. It’s effectively a curfew. Smaller pantec trucks are fine, but anything over a certain load has to stay on the outskirts of Brisbane. What about the environment you say with all these smaller pantecs being used? Well what about all the cars that are now achieving optimum petrol and fumes usage because they aren’t idling for 30 minutes at one set of lights.

Pauline came up with this theory battling the Ipswich motorway everyday and after today I wholehartedly agree with her. Bugger the trucks.

Comments

comments

7 thoughts on “Traffic curfew in Brisbane

  1. Lynne says:

    You would not know about the late 60’s when I was caugt in traffic going into the city everyday to work. It used to take at least 45 mins to travel 11 kms. This was only on one of the major roads leading into the city and it was one of the reasons why the freeways came into being. The major mistake the council made at the time was getting rid of the trams. An easier solution would have been to widen the roads back then (they still would have to buy out homes in the way) and build a ring road around the city to handle the semi’s. Your mother

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  2. xeno says:

    while we are on the subject of semi-trailers, one nearly took me out on Friday afternoon as I merged (or tried to merge) onto the Cunningham Highway. I nearly ran out of bitumen expecting the semi to either move over to the right lane or pass by but it was a road train so was twice as long and almost never ending.

    The other thing is I’d like to see their speed limit restricted to 80 km/h (like in California) and so confined to the ‘slow lane’ if there is such a thing anymore.

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  3. Sarah says:

    Hi there!

    I posted a question to you about motorcycle training schools a while back. Just thought I’d let you know (as a fellow scooter/Vespa lover) that a great new Australian scooter forum has opened up here:

    http://www.aussiescooters.com/forum/

    It’s full of advice and tips, and is a great way for Aussies to chat and swap facts about their rides 🙂

    Cheers,
    Sarah.

    Reply
  4. madram says:

    ok, so let’s ban trucks from the City. And how do you suppose your local Woolworths or Coles supermarkets will get their stock? Or, for that matter, how will IKEA get all their scandanavian torture pieces? Maybe all the goods will just fly in from shipping terminals or railheads. Or, even better, we could replace the trucks with swarms of Vespas, each loaded up with an assortment of goods 🙂 While we live packed into Cities, we have to have some way of transporting in the massive quantities of consumables we demand…

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  5. amyo says:

    The trucks are allowed, but only after 7pm. It could be a good thing for the truck drivers as well.. If they get there in the middle of the day they can sleep on the outskirts until the curfew is lifted. Of course companies will just work them till they are dead regardless.

    I’ll still be able to get my scandanavian torture piece. 🙂

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  6. rdmcgregor says:

    A few points:
    First the problem with the freeway ideas is that it wasn’t fully implemented when it should have been, basically they only did half the job and the later additions like the ICB should have been put in along with the Riverside Expressway. That should have been enough to see us through until about 2003…

    As for tunnels you neglected to mention the new bus tunnel/busway station going in under King George Square (construction starting in May).

    The real problem with a truck curfew, apart from what madram said, is that there is still heaps of heavy construction going on in the inner city, and it is probably unreasonable to expect the developers of these projects to pay for people to work 7pm – 7am so that they can co-ordinate with the trucks they need. But other than that it is a good idea. There is another alternative being to just introduce a CBD toll for everyone, like they are doing in London, but I don’t think any pollies would be brave enough to suggest it.

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