As one who drives our highways most days, to Sydney and Canberra, I am increasingly concerned and distressed by worsening traffic congestion, compounded by what seems to be a serious deterioration in driver etiquette, patience, and probably skills.
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To most motorists there is no excuse for traffic congestion. It is the outcome of decades of pathetic transport policies by governments of both persuasions. There has been an unbalanced focus on widening roads and building new roads, especially toll roads, with capacities usually well short of rapidly rising demand, and seemingly only moving the major traffic jam to some other part of the network.
Proper transport policy would take a holistic view, assessing all the major alternative forms of transport, in the broader planning context. A major failing has been the focus on roads, giving far less attention to rail and other public transport.
A global city, with the size and spread of Sydney, should have an effective mass transit system, similar to London, or New York, or even Singapore. Budget constraints have been used as the excuse for not building such a system in Sydney, but I am sure the resulting inefficiency costs imposed by congestion are never properly factored in to the calculation.
When I first moved to live in Exeter in the Highlands full-time, some 13-14 years ago, I did so with the expectation I could take the train some days. However, within a few months of moving in, the number of trains was significantly reduced, forcing me, and many others, onto the increasingly inadequate roads.
In a similar vein, the government proceeded with about a 70 percent expansion of Port Botany through this decade. With little of this being absorbed by rail, that has meant a near 70 percent increase in the number of trucks on the Hume/M5, and we have seen in recent days the significant increase in the number of truck crashes, costing lives and compounding congestion.
We are surely getting close to the need for a European-type response, banning trucks from the main highways in peak hours.
The congestion issue has been compounded by a deterioration in driving performance. I must be getting too old, but it seems to me that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of “hoons” on our highways, who distinguish themselves by weaving, quite dangerously, at speeds well above the limit, in and out of traffic lanes, mostly to gain just a few hundred metres.
Although I have had advanced driver training, and raced cars on a track on occasions, I always drive our highways leaving what I consider to be a “safe distance” of several car lengths between myself and the car in front. However, these days I am amazed how these hoons rush to fill in my safety gaps, sometimes several, and often just missing my front. More often than not they get away with it, and occasionally, unfortunately, they are the ones that initiate a pile up.
But, perhaps I shouldn’t worry about this. With the rapidly advancing advent of electric, autonomous (driverless) vehicles the problem may solve itself. An effective system of autonomous cars will see the need for considerably fewer cars on the road, providing a much more convenient, cost effective, transport system, with many fewer accidents.
Given the pace of this rollout that I see, perhaps my seven year-old daughter may never need to even learn to drive?