Beverly Goldfarb
CONGRATULATIONS to Martin Gilmour on his eloquent and insightful article ‘Sturges should give way on roundabout’ (The Examiner, 8 March 2009).
It’s hard to fault his logic. I hope our politicians heed a lesson before it is too late.

Yes, elect politicians to represent us, not to tell us we are wrong and threaten to withdraw funding unless we do it their way.

Yes, the Dilston-Windermere─Swan Bay─Rostella─Los Angelos community and the Launceston City Council concur that the design of these T-junctions for an area that experiences fog and ice so many days of the year are a catastrophe waiting to happen. In fact, a transport and safety researcher with 30 years of experience has advised that we should never design for internal merges where the southbound traffic exits into the fast lane and across two lanes to the left. Once the crashes start, he reckons we’ll have to put in a grade-separated junction anyway. Might as well do it now.

It is at our peril that we ignore the bus drivers with more than 40 years’ experience who have warned that the intersections to the bypass won’t be safe, that they will be a death trap, and that they won’t travel on them.

If the T-junctions go ahead I will have no alternative but to drive my 12-year-old son to school along this dangerous route, thanks to Mr Sturges. Every day I will have to run the gauntlet across three lanes of traffic barrelling along at 100 KPH.

So I’d like to invite the Minister to sit in my small car with me and my 12-year-old son and help us make our way through the fog at 8 in the morning. He could help us roll down the windows to listen for B-double trucks emerging out of the mist. I invite him to do this with us, not once, on a sunny day as a photo op, but each and every day of the year, year after year, over ice and through fog, while we brave the elements.

Maybe then he would not be so complacent about ignoring the advice of residents who know the area, City Council who value lives over dollars, bus drivers who know the roads and the area, and transport researchers with decades of experience.

Beverly Goldfarb
One of the Dilston Moms

To The Editor, Examiner

Cc Premier Bartlett