I had to go to the doctor's today to get the leg infection checked out. It had mostly, but not entirely, healed. However we were turfed off the bus one stop short of where I'd normally get off because George Street was closed.

You what?

For those who don't live in Sydney George Street is the main north-south artery of the city. Had I been able to go back in time to when Arthur Philip was laying out the city I would have said to him "Y'see that street there that you're naming after Good ol' King George? It needs to be wider. MUCH wider. 50% wider, at least. You may not need it now but trust me, in 200 years they'll thank you for it." Sydney would have looked very different but traffic would have been much easier. To those of you in the rest of the world, this is just a shot down a street. To anyone living in Sydney the fact that I can do this in the middle of a Monday afternoon is miraculous on a Biblical scale and probably violates at least half a dozen of the lesser laws of physics to boot.

Why is it happening? The state government is planning to run a light rail corridor down here and was doing preparatory work. (Work which, incidentally, brought the whole city to a standstill including causing buses from the north to take 2 hours just to get across the Harbour Bridge, so how they're supposed to cope when work on the light rail proper commences I have no idea. It didn't help that some of the sub-contractors severed one of the main traffic control system cables either.)

I was aware of the plan but didn't actually believe anything would ever be done about it. We have a long established history in this state of governments making grandiose announcements complete with glossy brochures featuring ministers in fluoro vests, then the project is forgotten about or cancelled. And given the cluster-frack that I consider the existing Sydney Light rail to be, the prospect that any government would actually wish to expand it (especially down George Street) causes some considerable boggling of the mind.

We shall see what comes of this in the future.

Last Year