There’s been an exciting story doing the global media rounds during the past week about the opening up of the Arctic sea passage now that the polar ice cap is melting. We are told that freight ships can now travel between Asia and the West (via the ‘Arctic shortcut’) thus shortening the route by 4,500 kilometres – and saving on greenhouse emissions for shipping!
Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/science/earth/11passage.html
What on Earth has this got to do with the Kingston bypass. Well the logic behind building freeways to reduce traffic congestion so as to reduce greenhouse emissions has about the same upside down, perverse logic.
I agree with Keith that this debate is about 20 years too late. No doubt the bypass will be built and Macquarie and Davey Streets will so become the next bottlenecks – engineers are predicting that traffic volumes there will double within 10 years.
But 20 years late or not, the passage of the bypass’ planning approval is a moment to reflect and strike up real debate about where the traffic is really taking us. For this is just one of many hundreds of road projects being vigorously pursued across Australia under the ‘Nation Building – Roads to Recovery’ highway building program. Under the very same government that has set a lowly 5 percent as a reasonable greenhouse abatement target.
There’s something strangely schizophrenic about these contradictions. Every government across the world is infected by them – because we are all confronted by the sheer, unstoppable momentum of the old, unable to cope with the new, we are creatures of habit and hard wired to accept change with reluctance.
I thank and admire those wonderful folk who have the temerity to expose this disease and dare to question where the traffic is really taking us.
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Chris Harries
