Experts lacked in tunnel vision

FROM MY CORNER ... with Ann Brunswick

The company that runs the Clem 7 tunnel, RiverCity Motorway has announced it needs the unanimous support of its 24 bankers to stave off going into receivership before the end of the year. Given the reputation of bankers for big-heartedness it’s a good bet the company is now clearing out a room in their offices for the receivers when they arrive.

A shareholders' meeting was told the problem was that only around 30,000 vehicles use the toll tunnel each day, not the predicted 90,000 or so that were predicted before it opened. Well ... surprise, surprise. Who would have thought drivers would baulk at paying more than $4 to travel in the tunnel? Not the “experts” who backed the project, despite similar tunnels interstate also not meeting traffic projections.
One would hope the lack of patronage is not behind the displays flashing on the electronic billboards above the Inner-City Bypass which delivers (apparently very little) traffic to and from the tunnel.
Driving along the ICB on the weekend the signs told me the Clem 7 was the way to get to where I was going (which it wasn’t in my case). Despite the sign flashing a repetitive plug for the tunnel, it did not tell me or other motorists that the tunnel was a toll road. That was left to one of those big green directional signs that pointed the way to the tunnel and was located just where the exit road to the tunnel runs off the ICB.
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Speaking of signs, in a recent column I made mention of the new billboards being erected around the inner-city area by the JC Decaux company as part of its contract with the Brisbane City Council to operate the CityCycle bike hire scheme.

Some of the bike stations in CBD and inner-suburban streets eat up limited on-street parking spaces and loading zones, while others take up scarce footpath space. Similarly, the illuminated billboards being installed around the CBD eat into footpath space or are erected at locations where other signage would most likely be declared illegal.
Several of the new signs in Ann Street have been installed at 90 degrees to the road and block almost half the width of the footpath. Yet again, any trader who did such a thing would be told to knock it off and face prosecution if they didn’t. The City Cycle scheme may yet prove a success. But is the loss of parking spaces and extra clutter on out footpaths worth it?
Surely a little extra thought could have found a better solution.
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Thankfully the Brisbane City Council is moving to redress the problem of the overwhelming heat that currently prevents us all from enjoying King George Square to the full.

When the revamped square opened it was soon obvious that its lack of shade was going to be a problem. Some would argue the problem was obvious, or at least should have been obvious, at the design stage. Certainly from memory the artist’s impression of the project did look very sparse.
It is interesting to note that the upper level of the square – the bit above the eatery on its northern edge – seems to have no real formal purpose use except to house a few scattered benches. While the area does look somewhat like an afterthought, it is equally interesting to note that its benches are actually used by city workers to sit on and eat their lunch while the remainder of the square itself is usually devoid of human habitation, except those scurrying to escape the heat.
Has anyone in the BCC worked out that maybe the sterile upper level of the square is being used precisely because it is under a shade cover? It will probably take an expensive ratepayer-funded study to work that out.
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At the weekend I read a story in a southern newspaper about the opening ceremony of the Asian games being held in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Is it just me or is anyone else sick and tired of opening – and closing – ceremonies of major sporting events?

Can’t someone just get up on a dais, blow a whistle and say: “Let the games begin.”? It would be some much simpler, and cheaper.