Head to Head does traffic

This week’s topic: That a London style congestion tax should be introduced in inner Sydney

Peter Whitehead

Yeah, and Pearly Queens on every Little Jack Horner, guv’nor, and a penny for the guy. Corblimey.

Can we have just one suggestion for solving Sydney City’s growing pains that is not a cringeing copy of some overseas catastrophe? Can we look at where we live and [after noting it is not a village] think if it ain’t broke don’t titivate it?

Why give those codependent Clover independents more gold bricks to wall themselves into Town Hall? Is our city of the future to be a sheltered workshop for self-funded retirees?

If you walk about town on foot you observe the roads more often vacant than crowded. No London style congestion. In a car waiting for lights to change, traffic is everywhere. That’s because you have chosen to plug yourself in traffic, steering a cell in a wad of vehicles ejaculated through control valves*.

Your decision making is mistaken, you risk-taking rake. You contribute overgenerously to our nation’s burgeoning carbon buttprint, cocooned in your cot of unnecessary accessories. Ignoring the costs of petrol, parking, passing across our Bridge, along our ‘freeways’, and through our tunnels as blithely as you disregard scientific concerns for human survival. No congestion tax could dowse your urge to burn our environment shunting your arse from A to B.

And that is your one correct choice – not to toss more money at Lord Mayor Moore. With her overstuffed Public Purse she resurfaces our sandstone city with more fashionable granite and constructs demolition derby runnels for cyclists.

She should invest more in social welfare programs to assist the poor souls down and out in Emerald City. We are all victims of the GFC if we do not care for those who have fallen first.

The London style congestion we must prevent is that of lives lost in the Great Lottery of Capitalist Competition. If we neglect their rehabilitation we will be press-ganged into their tragicomic miniseries. And we will be the fall guys – the collateral damage – the victims of their crimes and our craven disregard for others.

* More roundabouts might ease premature apprehension of congestion.

Andrew Woodhouse

They want your money.

You’d better get used to the CBD congestion tax sign, above. It may be coming to your neighbourhood soon. This week I’ve succumbed to the land of the Volvo, ABBA and reindeers: Sweden, where this logo warns that you’re being taxed (read fleeced) for driving into the city and then for leaving it as well. Ouch! It’s all electronic and Swedishly clever of course. And it works. Introduced to Stockholm three years ago by their state government after local council referenda, in a city of 2 million with an area of 8,500 km², it operates peak hours, weekdays only, A$4 each way.

However, it is a tax deduction and doesn’t apply to emergency vehicles, motor bikes, buses or the disabled. Electric cars are exempt. Traffic is down 25% as it raises A$400 million pa! I can feel the heat reflected from politicians’ eyes lighting up at this thought alone despite Clover Moore previously being against this tax.

The Swedes aren’t silly, especially my mate Matts.  His Viking, Volvo-driven, local knowledge tells me tolls are avoided altogether by taking the Frösundaleden turnoff.  Try entering that in your Navman!

And in ancient Londinium, now modern London, population 7.5 million, area 4,700 km², the tax is a wallet-walloping A$16, 7am to 6pm weekdays, unless you drive an electric car. Get the picture yet?  Traffic is down 18%. The Australian Property Council, that cowboy bunch of heritage-bulldozer bullies, opposes CBD tolls.  Almost for this reason alone shouldn’t we support them?

Sydney, population 4.5 million, area 4,000 km², similar to London’s, must reduce CBD car use and car abuse to increase our LIFE quotient, my Living Index-Factored Equation, measuring clean air and healthy, open pedestrian spaces. Repeat my mantra: A City Is Its People. But, until both the quantity and the quality of our public transport increases, people won’t abandon cars.  Who can blame them? They must get to work and visit sick rellies. They need to rapid-transit children to sport and they enjoy country weekend escapes.

Why are we so backwards in moving forwards?

Correction. In the 18 June edition of Head to Head, Andrew Woodhouse referred to Clover Moore’s MP salary as being given to charities. In fact, the reference should have been to her Lord Mayoral salary. He apologises for the error.