12 November 2007

GDE Slowing opening

| BenMac
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The ABC reports that the Belconnen Way intersection of the Gungahlin Drive Extension will start opening upto traffic as of Tuesday 13th. Although that’s only a small part of the intersection, as the rest will be opened over the next 3 weeks. Roads ACT also say that the entire project (GDE+Glenloch) will be completed by June 2008.

You would think that they could opening it all up to traffic at the same time. Having a look at this intersection/flyover today, I noticed a strange design for people who live in Aranda. If you’re coming from the Glenloch Interchange and want to turn into Bandjalong Cres, you have drive under the Aranda bridge towards Belconnen Way and do a u-turn to come back up and over the Aranda bridge.

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Impassive: are you spending 5 minutes there, or guessing shit? Doesn’t it bank up all the way to the Parliament House lights? Some days all the way to London Circuit.

Very witty Luke.. of course it is perfectly reasonable for the convenience of the 10 cyclists that use that cycle path every day to supersede the convenience of the thousands of motorists that have an extra 5 minutes to sit in traffic.. and of course to generate the extra pollution that those precious cyclists inhale deeply as they struggle by..

So what? There are still 3 lanes in either direction (including the T2 transit lane). That’s the same as there is on Capital Circle, and South of Kent St… so I’m not sure exactly where this ‘bottleneck’ is. Perhaps you just need to take a deep breath, and realise you live amongst several hundred thousand other people.

You are not Moses and Adelaide Avenue is not the Red Sea.

Impassive: again, those lanes were almost exclusively being used as a rat run between Hopetown & Kent. Removing them has made the on and off ramps just that, making the traffic engineers happy.

Hey caf.. you obviously don’t use Adelaide Ave if you are not aware that the 2 lanes between Hopetoun Crt and Kent St have been converted to cycle paths, causing a brilliant bottleneck for motorists.. and maybe they could have made the northbound traffic for our new university u-turn at the Hindmarsh lights.. that would have removed the need to add 10 minutes to the commute for all Tuggeranong residents.

I heard that the Glenloch interchange is based off an american design. The additional roads are for when they realised the cars drive on the other side of the road over there, and therefore had no exits.

Canberra’s very own ‘the dish’ moment.

Do we get our own steel girder grass tussock?

I thought the Glenlock fiasco/phenomenon/fsckup was about eventually giving the Southside a free flow through to Civic, once the major works were finished and we didn’t have to use the bizarre “Turn left to go right” method of getting through it.

That said, the Lady Denman detour has been a cannonball run for over a year now (90+kph seems to be standard), and the extra set of lights don’t seem to be effective.
*I have seen many a person run red and nearly clip a pedestrian*

Impassive/caf: I think they did some traffic engineering under cover of the bike lanes.
Heading south from Parliament House past the Lodge, it used to be fun passing slow drivers in the left lane. Not supposed to be doing that so its gone.
Between the Deakin bridges, most traffic used the outside lane to enter and immediately exit. Wasn’t supposed to work like that, so that lane has gone.

Felix the Cat10:03 pm 13 Nov 07

Re; time saver traffic announcements on the radio – does ANYBODY find this useful EVER? I breezed down Barry Dr, cruised Clunies Ross then came to a full stop on Parks Way at Anzac Parade… and what are they saying on the radio? “Barry Dr a car park, Belco Way backed up to Bunnings, Clunies Ross a car park, but Parks Way running freely!” All completely wrong as far as I could tell.

Yeh I’ve been thinking the same! Some mornings when I’m cruising down Majura Rd, Ashley is saying similar stuff like “it’s a car park” when I’m basically the only car on it (8.15am).

The traffic reports are good if he tells you about an accident or a road blocked for some other reason so you know to avoid the area.

A comment if I may on the uselessness of GDE. A work collegue and I left Mitchell at 5pm the other day, I was going to Weston, he was going to Belconnen. I went via GDE and got off on Ginninderra Dr and he went down William Slim Dr past Giralang and McKellar and right onto Ginninderra Dr. I finally caught up to him at Coulter Drive. How many millions of $ did they spend on this road and it’s actually slower than the old way? They would of been far better off putting the money wasted on “grass” and “bogong moth” sculptures into extra lanes or actually building the road so it goes to the the town centre.

Would you mind explaining how exactly two lanes were “taken off Adelaide Ave to give to the cyclists”? As far as I can see the only change in number of lanes on Adelaide avenue was redesignating the bus lanes as T3 Transit lanes, which was done to increase the number of lanes available to cars while the Glenloch roadworks are happening. The “cyclists ate my roadway” conspiracy theory is getting tiresome.

I suppose they *could* have built a massive flyover at the prison site instead of traffic lights, but just maybe that would have been a bit of a waste of money?

Re the southside comment.

With this government, I would go the incompetency route, rather than conspiracy. I don’t believe that they are capable of a conspiracy. Acheiving this is up there with a planned approach to development, a traffic plan and a viable health system. Not in my life time.

The opening of the intersection means nothing for those of us on the southside. The apparently endless construction of Glenloch is the issue for us. I am astounded that the Govt simultaneously dismantled Glenloch, took two lanes off Adelaide Ave to give to the cyclists and added a set of lights to the Monaro Hwy. Is this a deliberate attack on the southside commuters or simply incompetent disorganised roadworks?
And BTW are we all aware that the bridge that they didn’t knock down at Glenloch is to be a bridge to nowhere? No road connects to it – it will just sit there as an other odd piece of installation art.

I’m not entirely opposed to the grass tussock artwork but last I saw it it was a boring a bog standard undercoat-grey.. Perhaps if there were an increase in colour (they may be – I am talking from a few days ago here) it would be more visually interesting.

speaking of public art, can someone explain the big black thing in the median strip on northbourne opposite Jolimont??

Yeah, I quite like the grass tussock too. It’s something a little bit different and gives a bit of character to the road. They’re actually still installing it as of this morning (there’s still a few beams lying on the ground waiting to go in). You’ll never create art that everyone likes – that’s part of what makes it art 🙂

Gungahlin Al9:36 am 13 Nov 07

I saw the steel beam art piece being installed last weekend, and have to say I think it’s pretty cool. And now i know it represents a grass tussock, I can really see that and it makes it more ‘real’ for me.
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”
And I find it a LOT better than the “pear on a stack of cuisenaire rods + rubble pile” down the other end!

I like the steel beam tussocks personally. An explosion of industrialism in freeze frame as it were.

Could it be that they are hoping to avoid all the confusion opening the first bit did?

Of course there will be those that try to work out how to shortcut through the unopened bits.

A bit of art does a lot to take away from the bleakness of concrete. Still haven’t seen it yet so I might be back here demanding it gets melted down.

I drove past Belco x GDE this morning and couldn’t tell the difference. The ramp on the east side is still two way, nobody was doing the Aranda u-turn, and yet the traffic was up the wahzoo regardless!

There’s absolutely no info on the TAMS site and the advice coming over the radio is impossible to understand and, it seems, premature. Does anybody know if there’s a press release or any reliable information about this?

Re; time saver traffic announcements on the radio – does ANYBODY find this useful EVER? I breezed down Barry Dr, cruised Clunies Ross then came to a full stop on Parks Way at Anzac Parade… and what are they saying on the radio? “Barry Dr a car park, Belco Way backed up to Bunnings, Clunies Ross a car park, but Parks Way running freely!” All completely wrong as far as I could tell.

Re; the “native grass” sculpture – Just what this city needs – more targets for vandals!

Yeah I noticed the ‘artwork’ a couple of days ago and wondered how I’d missed it.. has it been up for long?? I guess it’s another of Canberra’s attempts to feel like we are a ‘real city’ by imitating other bigger cities artworks..

On topic however, I live right near the Belconnen Way/GDE intersection and will be really interested to see how much this alleviates the traffic issues in the area.

Growling Ferret7:54 am 13 Nov 07

I noticed the artwork – its a 1/10th scale attempt at the Melbourne Citylink Artwork – the giant cheese stick, the goalposts of the Bolte Bridge, the bridge with ‘ribs’.

At least its not a stupid bloody pyramid of dirt

canberra towie10:22 pm 12 Nov 07

Has anyone see the weard steel beam ARTWORK (i assume thats what its ment to be )just near the barton hwy overpass ?
WTF !?!?
I mean with that and the big rocks on poles near belco way i’m sure stanjoke is loosing his mind

Maybe the shitty Sculptors are ment to take our minds off the bad design of the new road !

You would think that they could opening it all up to traffic at the same time.
I might think that, but this stuff tends to be pretty meticulously planned – were it just a matter of yanking away a bunch of cones and saying “go for your life”, I’m sure they’d love to do that – it’d save them a lot of effort. I’d be reluctant, however, to second guess people who do this stuff for a living, any more than I’d want them to tell me how to be doing my job 🙂

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