City workers can be so, so pedestrian

FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick

Quite often my morning commute takes me through the edge of our CBD. In particular my trusty Land Rover must negotiate a particular intersection, namely Turbot and Albert streets outside the University of Queensland’s dental school. It is there that my trek causes me to take a left-hand turn from Albert Street into Turbot Street.

But that can happen only after pedestrians cross the street. At this intersection the traffic lights give pedestrians a bit of a head start by showing them a green silhouetted stylised pedestrian for, at a guess, five or so seconds before the vehicles waiting to turn left are given a green light.
This coincides with pedestrians being shown a flashing red silhouetted pedestrian before becoming a constant red. But what usually happens each morning is that once the red pedestrian light flashes, the pedestrians approaching to cross do not stop as they are meant to do, but run to catch the light before it turns a continuous red. This has the effect of holding up turning vehicles so that on occasions only one, two or maybe three get through for each change of the lights.
The result is that a queue of vehicles forms at the lights because of the pedestrian stragglers. The same situation would be repeated at intersections right across our city. Which has got me thinking. If police or road safety authorities want to stop pedestrians crossing against the lights, surely the flashing red lights should be dropped from the sequence.
The flashing red light gives them a false sense of security, that they can make a bolt for it and scurry across. A solid red light would surely send a more direct message – do not cross.
The Brisbane City Council and the Bligh Government are spending millions of dollars on “congestion-busting”" roadworks. But a simple change in pedestrian lights might just make traffic flow a little bit smoother.

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Visiting friends at New Farm the other day it was noticeable how many residents were taking the opportunity of the Brisbane City Council’s regular kerbside clean-up to dispose of many unwanted household goods.

Of course among “useless” items these days are the cathode-ray television sets that just a few short years ago were deemed state-of-the-art. Now they are not even offered to neighbours or friends, or even local charity outlets. They are just dumped on the footpath signalling that the householder in question has upgraded to a digital flat-screen model.
But I was also told that even if someone wanted to scrounge the sets for their own or someone else’s use, they would be sadly disappointed.
It seems some people drive around the areas earmarked for kerbside clean-ups and pounce on the old TV sets. Unfortunately all they want them for is their copper wiring, meaning the backs of the sets are busted off and the wire ripped out. That leaves them useless and in at least two pieces on the footpath.

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Because of the severe storm that hit Brisbane early last week, it fell to me to ring my home insurer to lodge a claim for some pieces of household equipment that suffered from an electrical surge as a result of a nearby lightning strike.

Naturally when ringing the insurer in question the first thing that came on the line was a computerised voice asking me various questions that relied on voice-recognition technology. Also, naturally, the system was not only annoying but restricted in the questions it asked and the answers a caller could provide. But that’s another story.
What did strike me was that one of the standard pre-recorded questions asked callers if their claim was in relation to the “recent storms” in Queensland. To me it seemed noteworthy that the insurer in question did not ask if claims were connected to the recent storms or floods.
But then, I guess that might be viewed by them as the tiniest admission that they covered policyholders for floods.

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Speaking of storms, is it just me or does anyone else think the canonisation of our premier Anna Bligh as a result of her public performance during the recent floods and cycle is going just a tad too far?

Sure, she did a good job in keeping the state informed of potential pending doom and seemed to strike all the right notes in her regular news conferences. But isn’t that what government leaders are meant to do?
Have we sunk so far in our expectations, let alone in the quality of those occupying leadership positions in this country, that when someone actually does their job we shove a halo on their head and start carrying them on a sedan chair?