Changed Conditions Ahead. Modest Proposal Hazarded

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday October 24, 1990

PETER FITZSIMONS

LET'S TALK turkey. Traffic in this town is a turgid and terrible mess. And dangerous. How many times can you read the same inane bumper stickers on the stopped car in front of you before suffering serious mental damage? We've got to make a few changes before we hit Final Gridlock. Changes along these lines.. .

* Transit Lanes. It was a truly brilliant idea. You can almost see the brainstorm happening: "I KNOW | We'll have special transit lanes open only to cars with at least three people in them. We'll soon have all of Sydney forming car pools and that'll diminish the traffic problem |"

But 20 years into the experiment, ask yourself this: how many people do you know who have formed car pools specifically to take advantage of the transit lanes?

My friend Footrot knows half of Sydney and he is not aware of a single instance. His girlfriend, Crash'n'Burn, knows the other half and she doesn't either.

So we're left with the ludicrous situation of having two clogged lanes beside one almost empty one - at the exact times full capacity is most needed. Stunning.

The traffic gurus could expand the traffic-carrying capacity of these roads by about 30 per cent at peak hour, and it wouldn't involve the digging of even one tunnel. Just abolish transit lanes and be done with it.

Yes, yes, of course we naughty commuters should have formed car pools. But we haven't. End of story. Free the lanes.

* The Bridge toll. The most knucklebrained of all knucklebrains is that knucklebrain who does not know he is a knucklebrain, to paraphrase my old maths teacher.

Do the people who set the bridge toll at $1.50 at least know what knucklebrains they are?

Why, when all of us have $1 and $2 coins but no $1.50 coins, would you set the toll at an amount almost guaranteed to need change, and then go to all the trouble of making special $1.50 tokens? Whatever book of Bureaucratic Bungling that one came out of should be burnt forthwith.

At zero cents, the traffic would move more freely and many of us could once again afford to eat Crunchie Bars. At $2, the Government's coffers would expand and many of the toll collectors could be replaced by buckets.

"You'd put innocent people out of work |" I hear you cry.

Piffle. The ceiling on the number of government employees is not determined by the amount of work there is to do so much as how much money there is to pay them. By simplifying the toll, by whatever method, the toll collectors could be switched to more productive work.

Of course, if the toll did go up to $2, some committee or other would soon emerge under the name of "Dashboard-Biting-Mad Citizens Against The Toll Being$2", but they would shortly disappear back into the woodwork from whence they came.

* Red Light cameras. No fair. Dirty pool. People are not rabbits. Get rid of these electronic rabbit traps.

* "Left-hand turn permitted after stopping" signs. Hallelujah and Hark The Herald Angels Sing rolled into one. Sometimes, out of the back of the gloomy bureaucratic cave, unexpectedly emerges a pencil-thin ray of light that should move us all to applause.

The roundabouts were such a case and so are the left-hand turn signs. But there aren't nearly enough of these little gems. There is barely a corner in the country that wouldn't profit by having such a sign on it.

But let's not put some tedious committee on the job and then crank up the people who make signs to start producing them. That would take months, if not years.

The quick, easy way is take out a full page in the Herald next Saturday, with the exact sign printed upon it, and then authorise the masses to paste them up wherever we see fit.

The whole problem could be wiped out before next Sunday. Whaddya say?

* Red arrows. Except for those on the crest of a hill and at particularly busy intersections, they are unnecessary. Countless people-hours are wasted every day by commuters needlessly waiting at red arrows. No wonder national productivity is such a crook dog.

The point is, people can see with their very own eyes what the automatic traffic-light timers cannot - that the way is clear. And if the way is not clear, they sit still. Away with the red arrows.

* Draconian traffic infringement penalties. Get rid of these too. It's all very well to have law and order on the roads which people breach at their peril, but not at the cost of dislocating people's lives for mere trifles. An automatic licence disqualification for going 45km/h over the speed limit is such a case.

Who has never touched 105 km/h while on the approaches to the Harbour Bridge, late at night? (Apart from me, I mean, Officer.)