Public transport advocate Robert Dow, from Rail Back on Track, said the proposed Centenary tunnel – along with other road projects such as the “second M1” Coomera Connector – came at the expense of public transport projects.
Central among those was the seemingly abandoned Brisbane Subway, which would have linked western suburbs to the airport, via West End, the CBD, Newstead, Bulimba and Hamilton.
EDIT: The Queensland Government made the original announcement about a proposal to upgrade Centenary Motorway on Sunday.
Getz are good little cars, haven’t heard of any major issues. Only consideration is that the air con can struggle with the Aussie summer heat, so test that out if you think that might be an issue for you.
Ultimately, Toyotas and Mazdas have the best reputation for used car reliability, but also more expensive to buy second hand as well.
Thanks for that! Yes I would get a Toyota but yes they’re very pricy $$ also know they go forever. My brother recently got a 1999 Van with 350,000kms and runs fine!
Used Mazdas or Toyotas are more expensive than other used cars,my Mazda CX3 was $31000 (before trade in price)and it was 2 years old when I bought it last year.
I know I have a great car that should last me for years if I look after it.
I didn’t want to buy a MG or other Chinese built cars even though they’re cheaper to buy new,I wanted a car brand that has a great reputation for reliability
Gee I’m glad I bought my last new car in 2019 before the new and used car prices literally increased 30 - 50% seemingly overnight. I paid $30k for a brand new (European built) Focus Active in 2019. At that time Mazda 3’s and Hyundai i30s started in the low to mid-$20k’s brand new.
I could have bought a MG small SUV that’s a similar size as my Mazda,they’re less than 25K brand new but I don’t trust these Chinese built vehicles and having indicators and wiper controls back to front would drive me nuts
Sydney’s M4 was shut down during this morning’s peak, due to an emergency incident.
This shot shows the motorway’s management system in use during a closure, the overhead gantry indicating for the left lane to ‘exit’ with the other three lanes ‘closed’ ie. motorway closed.
The electronic signs are identical to the ones used across a number of Melbourne’s freeways. However while VicRoads uses the “STREAMS” suite of software/algorithms, I believe RMS in Nsw opted for their own. Both Sydney and Melbourne now roll the systems out as standard on new projects, the recent ‘Rozelle Interchange/M8’ in Sydney, as well as the new Airport Link and upcoming Western Distributor also have them or elements of them. As will Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel-Western Distributor-West Gate Fwy upgrade, North East Link including Eastern Fwy upgrade, Metropolitan Ring Road upgrade east of Plenty Rd and Western Ring Road outbound upgrade between the Princes Fwy and Tilburn Rd. And the future upgrades of the Hume Fwy, Western Fwy and outbound Calder Fwy in their urban limits. Plus the proposed distant Outer Metropolitan Ring Road project.
When Cato contacted the Savannah court to inquire about the potential typographical error, he was met with a firm response. “The lady on the phone confirmed the ‘$1.4 million’ figure,” Cato shared. “She insisted that I either pay up or appear in court on Dec. 21.”
Joshua Peacock, a representative for the city of Savannah, shed light on the perplexing situation. Speaking to the Associated Press, Peacock explained that the jaw-dropping figure was an auto-generated “placeholder” by an e-citation software. The significant number appears because super speeder tickets necessitate a court appearance, lacking a pre-set fine upon being issued by the police.
East West Link is urgently needed, but the political bickering and new expenses and debt seem to have cast doubt, though federal Liberals have said they’ll still commit to it save for a future Liberal State Government, not since 2014 a decade ago has this seemed realistic. Still an absolute mess for Ballarat Rd-Smithfield Rd-Racecourse Rd-Elliot Ave-Royal Pde-Alexandra Pde between the Eastern Fwy and Western Ring Road.
Western Freeway in its urban limits is in dire need of an upgrade, at least current seriously proposed and awaiting federal funding and sign off, still 2 lanes.
Hume Freeway in its urban limits needs an urgent upgrade, still 2 lanes.
There are plans for a 100km Outer Metropolitan Ring Road between Little River and the Hume Fwy.
And the S-E north-south corridor (Warrigal Rd, Blackburn Rd, etc) is looking like needing a freeway, extended from the Mordialloc Fwy (Frankston Fwy) to the Eastern Fwy/North East Link.
Meanwhile… Wasted tens of billions potentially on the West Gate Tunnel-Western Distributor-West Gate Fwy west project and North East Link.
Though glad the Metropolitan Ring Road is finally being completed/connected and they’ve just started an upgrade on the Western Ring Road between Laverton North and Ardeer.
Sydney, though taken decades, seems to finally be moving with multiple projects: NorthConnex, WestConnex (M4 East and M8) including Rozelle, M4 west upgrade, Airport Link, Western Distributor upgrade, Western Harbour Tunnel and M6 (F6 extension south of the M5).
Not quite - they are dual carriageway regional highways in the mainland sense. They might have on ramps, off ramps and grade separation - but they lack these two signs.
It’s motorways and highways in Brisbane these days, although many old timers like myself still refer to the “South East Freeway” and “Western Freeway” on occasion. These are now part of the motorway system. Eg the SE Freeway is the first part of the Pacific Motorway, but people will still say “get on the freeway” and a few of the old entrance signs still read Freeway Entrance. But the term is gradually disappearing.
On the flip side heading north out of Brisbane it’s called the Bruce Highway although it’s definitely motorway standard for over 160km northwards and signed M1.
The only way we will ever get vaguely on top of the infrastructure needs will be cutting out all the middle men all slurping away their own profit, resulting in these hugely inflated bills for what should be simple road projects.
The West Gate Tunnel is absolutely the worst of all of this - it never stacked up as a project, being agreed to at the whim of Transurban, but the Victorian public have to pay for it multiple times - first with the extension of tolls on Citylink for another decade, then with needing to directly pay for part of the road, and then paying by tolls being imposed back on the West Gate Bridge, to pay off the road that Transurban wanted made!
If you had tolls going to a public company, then you could actually invest that back into further road infrastructure, instead it’s becoming Transurban’s profit margin - especially when tolling gets so bad like it has in Sydney you have to put a scheme in with the toll cap where you have to take taxpayer funds to pay back motorists for how obscene the costs are for driving on the roads.
One example that I can’t stand is when you see the signs for the temporary speed limits during roadworks for the WGT - and there’s some label for a hire company - that we’ve “hired” a sign that has been sat there for 3 years or so, likely paying a daily rate out, when you could have bought one outright many times over for the same cost. Why is some third party skimming their profit on that?
We let private businesses profit obscenely on building public infrastructure - then wonder why costs are going through the roof and we don’t have enough of it in place, yet never get anything done on time and on budget thanks to the “efficiency” of the private sector.
