Hindmarsh Drive Accidents

Ride a bike you lazy buggers. 🙂

Mysteryman said :

Why is there always someone who compares Canberra to Sydney? Tell you what, when the population of Canberra multiplies by 10 and we get close to the current population of Sydney, THEN you can make comparisons.

Find another city of comparable size to Canberra and compare our traffic with theirs. Maybe Wollongong or Newcastle.

+1. I was about to write pretty much the same thing

Compared to other cities it’s size Canberra traffic is about average, maybe a bit worse at times (esp on northside) for several reasons:

(1) so many people work in the public service and come to work and leave at roughly the same time; in other cities travel seems more spread out throughout the day
(2) employment is concentrated a several town centres, with lots of cross town traffic trying to get to all of them at the same time, often on just a few possible roads
(3) High proportion of new, Gungahlin-like development, with lots of people and cars concentrated in small area on outskirts (in other cities, there is less greenfield development in proportion to city size)
(4) traffic lights are poorly synchronised, creating chokepoints (or at least not managing them properly)

On the other hand, we do have more freeway type road kms here per head of population than similar cities, and more investment in such roads, so maybe shouldn’t complain too much worse.

What, Wollongong and Newcastle don’t have any traffic issues when theres a 4 car pileup on a main road at rush hour? This city has 3 main roads on pretty much all routes and you want more roads and more lanes just in case?

Sandman said :

yellowsnow said :

all the accidents showed is how depended the city is on a few key roads. Partially block one road and you cripple half the city.

All they showed is Canberrans unwillingness to accept a small delay and plan accordingly.

Whining about Canberra traffic for no real reason seems to be the popular sport around here. I’ve spent 2.5 hrs getting from Mascot to Cambelltown on the M5 before. No accidents, no roadworks, nothing but traffic. I’ve also spent 1.5 hours going past the Brisbane Cbd at 1pm on a weekday. Thought I’d have a quick look at the city on my way through rather than taking the generic ring road and got a much longer tour than I anticipated.
In comparison, last tuesday I drove from the Yarra Glen roundabout via Northbourne to Dickson at 5:45 pm without dropping below 40kph. Most of the trip was at the speed limit. Show me another city where you can do that.

Why is there always someone who compares Canberra to Sydney? Tell you what, when the population of Canberra multiplies by 10 and we get close to the current population of Sydney, THEN you can make comparisons.

Find another city of comparable size to Canberra and compare our traffic with theirs. Maybe Wollongong or Newcastle.

bitzermaloney said :

cranky said :

I would be interested to know the details of these accidents.

29 May – 3 vehicle collision at Hindmarsh Drive west bound near Jerrabomberra Avenue.

30 May – Bus / Car accident on Tugger’s parkway closing the parkway northbound between Hindmarsh Dr & Cotter Rd. Resulting in gridlock throughout Woden and most of Weston Creek.

31 May – Hindmarsh Drive and Tyagarah St O’Malley, resulting the Fyshwick bound lanes being closed for a couple hours

Two of the three accidents were either side of the “average” speed camera, and the other effectively closed the parkway.

It’s noice to have a public transport service, but when it takes over an hour (sometimes closer to 2hr) to go the 6km from Weston Creek to Fyshwick in the morning (compared with 25 min by car), it isn’t a realistic option.

On 31 May, two Woden-bound lanes were closed for hours too. Right near the Average Speed Cameras.
I guess somebody was worried about their speedo and failed to spot a hazard.

The ACT Government *will* give us a performance assessment of these cameras in terms of numbers of accidents in the area before v. after, won’t they?

bitzermaloney said :

It’s noice to have a public transport service, but when it takes over an hour (sometimes closer to 2hr) to go the 6km from Weston Creek to Fyshwick in the morning (compared with 25 min by car), it isn’t a realistic option.

Have a BRT line along Hindmarsh Dr from Weston to Fyshwick ,Brindabella Park, Russell and City using the centre lanes of the six lane road. More people would use it then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0kCCJmNKgQ

Sandman said :

Whining about Canberra traffic for no real reason seems to be the popular sport around here. I’ve spent 2.5 hrs getting from Mascot to Cambelltown on the M5 before. No accidents, no roadworks, nothing but traffic. I’ve also spent 1.5 hours going past the Brisbane Cbd at 1pm on a weekday. Thought I’d have a quick look at the city on my way through rather than taking the generic ring road and got a much longer tour than I anticipated.
In comparison, last tuesday I drove from the Yarra Glen roundabout via Northbourne to Dickson at 5:45 pm without dropping below 40kph. Most of the trip was at the speed limit. Show me another city where you can do that.

Yes, you’re quite right. And it’s even worse in Mumbai, or Tokyo, or New York. I bet there’s alien planets where it’s even worse than that! Because it’s much worse in other places, we should never complain about something that we don’t want and can’t see why we should put up with it.

Besides, now that we have daily traffic jams and snarls, it means that Canberra is now a “proper” city and is therefore much better than when it didn’t have traffic jams.

cranky said :

I would be interested to know the details of these accidents.

29 May – 3 vehicle collision at Hindmarsh Drive west bound near Jerrabomberra Avenue.

30 May – Bus / Car accident on Tugger’s parkway closing the parkway northbound between Hindmarsh Dr & Cotter Rd. Resulting in gridlock throughout Woden and most of Weston Creek.

31 May – Hindmarsh Drive and Tyagarah St O’Malley, resulting the Fyshwick bound lanes being closed for a couple hours

Two of the three accidents were either side of the “average” speed camera, and the other effectively closed the parkway.

It’s noice to have a public transport service, but when it takes over an hour (sometimes closer to 2hr) to go the 6km from Weston Creek to Fyshwick in the morning (compared with 25 min by car), it isn’t a realistic option.

yellowsnow said :

all the accidents showed is how depended the city is on a few key roads. Partially block one road and you cripple half the city.

All they showed is Canberrans unwillingness to accept a small delay and plan accordingly.

Whining about Canberra traffic for no real reason seems to be the popular sport around here. I’ve spent 2.5 hrs getting from Mascot to Cambelltown on the M5 before. No accidents, no roadworks, nothing but traffic. I’ve also spent 1.5 hours going past the Brisbane Cbd at 1pm on a weekday. Thought I’d have a quick look at the city on my way through rather than taking the generic ring road and got a much longer tour than I anticipated.
In comparison, last tuesday I drove from the Yarra Glen roundabout via Northbourne to Dickson at 5:45 pm without dropping below 40kph. Most of the trip was at the speed limit. Show me another city where you can do that.

yellowsnow said :

all the accidents showed is how depended the city is on a few key roads. Partially block one road and you cripple half the city.

Pretty poor transport planning if you ask me. Yesterday was also a pretty good insight into our future. Once Molonglo is online and clogging the Parkway, Hindmarsh and Cotter Rd, every second day will be almost as bad as yesterday

Mind you the Northside has had to put up for far worse traffic for years, thanks to poor planning at Gungahlin – too many residents crammed into too small a space with not enough high capacity roads to take them to the outside world. So if they saw yesterday’s southside jams many northsiders would wonder what southsiders (used as they are to cruisy 15min commutes) were complaining about.

Northside roads are just poorly planned in general, most southsiders have known that for years and mostly why they choose the south.

Busses are at peak and roads are at peak. 90% of traffic is single person. When will get get rail?