6 November 2007

Pialligo whingers?

| Pandy
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Lately in the news the residents of Pialligo have been complaining about the land grab that the airport will do placing the new entrance roads to the airport within 5 metres of a house boundary: Canberra Times article here.
The new road will be 11metres closer to the house boundary, or about the width of my house.

Am I missing something here folks? Look at the Google Map here

And this map of the duplicated road here.

To me it looks like that the nearest that a house will be from the new road is 50 metres. And FFS! They live next door to the runway almost!

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From memory, the airport owners shut it down pretty quick, not long after taking over the airport. I imagine they have plans for the land it’s on, and I guess wanted to avoid problems later on by taking swift action. It’s their land now, privately owned, and as we are seeing, they can do pretty-well what they want on it.

Those government organisations mentioned have limited/no control over Snow’s land now.

While we are in the area, you can’t help but notice the remains of the eighth mile dragstrip on the unused land near the airport. I am not a drag racing person at all, but I would have liked to see the facility developed and become a success, just because I like success.
My question to the assembled is: What really happened with the lease, the local govt, Dept of Transport, and the NCA? Was it a conspiracy? Was it just incompetence, or were the right palms not greased successfully?
Anyone shed some light for me (and others, maybe)?

Gungahlin Al12:54 pm 09 Nov 07

Be advised that Caf’s link above is an 8MB download.

Is lite rail cheaper than light rail ?

Well if there’s one thing that we know about airport it’s that it’s usually found to be totally at odds with ACT Planning.

However, it does seem to make sense having the VFT terminal nearby to the airport at least. Doing so would obviously increase the value of the airport though so I would hope that CAG would be expected to kick in a few beans towards the cost.

That VFT should be lite rail to Gungahlin

That map is interesting, as it’s at total odds with the “ACT Planning” one. But both plainly want a VFT/train of some sort.

ant: The airport also have their own map – see this document, figure 6.1 on page 35 – showing the train terminating at the airport terminal.

Snow is acting like a dangerous megalomaniac and won’t stop until his airport is filled with buildings towering above the surroundings. I used to work at BBP and resented having to pay Snow’s extortionate parking rates being so far away from civilisation. He would even promote it to as being “CHEAPER THAN CIVIC!!”. Yeah, like by about $1 and in the middle of nowhere without all the features of Civic. There’s nothing stopping the guy jacking up the rates as he pleases because there’s NO COMPETITION out there.

The whole problem is we have an individual allowed to build and run effectively his own mini city. There’s no competition allowed and no business operating at the airport can go ahead without his approval. I even heard that the building I worked in was not permitted any vending machines as this wasn’t allowed in the lease agreement. I can only presume it would compete against his rival businesses.

Snow is anti competition as evidenced by his lawsuit and bleatings over that Fyswick development to compete against Brand Depot. He wants to operate as a monopoly in his own little town. To escape Snow’s high prices, the isolation and the chaotic traffic (caused by Snow) the BBP worker can only get a job elsewhere.

Re the planned VFT route, I was wrong (I think) to attribute that to the Airport. The paper it appears on has “ACT Planning” on it. It was included in the planning stuff for the roadworks for the Airport. And it doesn’t seem to have a terminal for the airport. It just comes down Majura valley, and then slices right through peoples’ homes, properties and businesses, despite there being heaps of open land where Dairy Flat Road goes, and heaps on the other side (that empty expanse at the end of the runway.

apparently they want to develop the area (Causeway) where the current Canberra train station is, and move the Canberra train station further into the Fyshwick area (makes sense).

Word is that Snow plans to build a hotel close to the terminal. There’s been some linking of a train terminal in conjunction with that, but I have no firm details.

Lord Mælinar4:53 pm 07 Nov 07

The security risk to pick up and okay to set-down is directly proportional to the calibre of the avaliable workforce on 12 September 2001.

I think you will agree that the bottom of the barrel was cored through, and the lichen from the bottom of the bottom of the barrel was recruited into the workforce.

Some of these guys would, as S4anta puts it, be more profitably employed cleaning windows with their tongues.

Hence the solution to your issue…

51modelbloke – man, just park up in the carpark at brindabella. It’s a 5 minute walk. Chances are, you won’t get booked for parkin there that long, unless u are really unlucky.

51modelBloke1:06 pm 07 Nov 07

Whilst on the subject of SnowTown, I recently returned home from the Indy Champ car/V8 supercars races, now there is a city who can host a street circuit race. Pity the wowsers got their way and had the local event axed, but that is another topic, could have been moved to a more suitable date though.

Anyhoo, back to my rant, when we were waiting to be picked up at C.I.A. we were witness to a disgusting display by a gestapo indoctrinated parking inspector. This fat public servant was given an older gentleman a ‘god almighty serve’ and booking him for daring to pick someone up in the set-down area.

Appreciating the signs clearly state you cannot pickup because of security reasons (what the???) I quickly rang my lift and suggested picking me up in the car park. No problems there, except to stop, load cases in the boot and depart, cost a princely $1.50. And that is my bitch… Yet another blatent Snow job!

Please, someone explain why it is a security risk to pick up and okay to set-down?

ant: the airport “Master Plan” talks about the VFT approach through Majura Valley (ie from the north).

that’s “Wodney” isn’t it? Of “pitcherwesk pee-a-wag-o”.

I say we build it over Rodney’s. That guy sh1ts me.

Found some information from March this year on ABC.. .http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/03/23/1879385.htm

Snow needs it. If we are an hour from Sydney by VFT, then we can become a Sydney airport.

I heard Dale Budd from the VFT consortium of 10 years ago talking-up the VFT again on the radio on Monday. So maybe it is back on.

VFT = Very Fast Train??? I didn’t know one was back on the agenda… is that to do with the “we’re Sydney’s second major airport” claim?

I’m not sure the map with the VFT route is on the net, yet. I’ll find out.
The airport has been very busy, doing land surveys and drawing up all kinds of plans. All the government has to do is hit it with their rubber stamp and hand over lots of money, and the airport will look after all the details.

Growling Ferret9:25 pm 06 Nov 07

terry is a bizillionaire cnut>] who owned brindabella the yacht and 100 things jo average wont. make the rich cnut pay.

ps – thanks brendan, the ferret is tanked!

The govt should make some decisions of their own on this, and not just be told what to do by the airport owners.

The road NEEDS upgrading, but come on, use the existing corridor.

Could you post a link to Snows VFT ant?

Seems to me that the government should put absolutly No money at all into increaseing the quality of the road. If terry wants people to be able to work at snow town he should build his own road.

I know that isn’t a realistic practical response, but damn it, this situation pisses me off!

Yep, Fairbairn’s ripping along at a good clip, using the existing road. I feel sorry for cars trying to turn towards Canberra from that in rush hour/s.

Next lot of buildings will go up on Majura (a few there already), imagine what THAT will do to traffic. The current roadworks drawn up by Snow don’t address Fairbairn or Majura.

Snow could have prevented a lot of the current trouble by putting some access roads IN the airport boundary itself. Naturally, he didn’t. (missed an opportunity there, he could have made them toll roads).

Snow’s map also shows his plan for the VFT. The terminal is at the airport terminal, and the track goes right through the middle of the Pialligo residences to link up with the main Canberra railway.

The plan appears to be to elbow Pialligo from the airport side with the road, then see it off completely by putting the rail line straight through it.

The VFT is very important to Snow, as it’s integral to his hopes of bringing in passenger jets and processing the international passengers at Canberra, and also for freight. It would enable him to make Canberra airport into a “helper” for Sydney airport, which is struggling with capacity for landings and takeoffs.

OpenYourMind211:41 am 06 Nov 07

You aint seen nothing yet. Snow has built four new office blocks at the old RAAF base. He’s building another three now, and he is rumoured to have a further 23 on the books for that site.

Presently all that traffic only has one way of exiting and that is at the T-intersection at the end of Glenora Dr. That traffic has to contend with all the traffic speeding down the hill from Qbn. It’s an accident simply waiting to happen.

Even though the Fairbairn buildings are in the middle of nowhere, put drivers at risk, and have no public transport or bicycle access, he still charges richly for parking.

Bugger the fringe dwellers, there is no such thing as a safe fringe in a growing City, just ask Tharwa residents.

I hate those airport roundabouts.

The flyover addresses the airport entrance problem, but not the problem that the new office building staff using the Business park roundabout will create once it is fully populated.

Heh heh, the airport is taking revenge for Tralee on all of Qbn!

What I find incredible is that the ACT Government is allowing the road that is to be built on their land to be get the go ahead without noise abatement walls.

For the airport to say that there is no enough room, may I suggest that they travel along the open bitsof Gungahlin Drive extension. also having made a couple of trips to Sydney via the M5, there is a section near the CBD that is being blocked-off while they are installing noise walls. I reckon they are building the wall on an existing road in a width less than 5m. To suggest that they cannot do it on a green field site, smacks of a tight arse attitude from Snow.

The question I ask is where are they going to place the Very Fast Train station at the airport?

OpenYourMind211:06 am 06 Nov 07

And then they have the hide to complain about lack of planning and lack of process with the development of the brand depot rival in Fyschwick. That takes the cake for sheer arse.

If you have a look at the development at the airport while driving past (let’s face it, you’ll have LOTS of time to do it while you sit in traffic!) you’ll see that they have indeed built right up to their boundary, despite having an awful lot of land free to the east and north. And it’s not hard to work out why.

They knew the road would be upgraded (they have forced it on the gov’t and the taxpayer, despite it being adequate before they built a CBD out there), and made damn sure the road would have to go over the other way. Notice all their deveopment so far has been up against the fences of where any road development would have to happen to fix the traffic.

Also, the road that the people are complaining about is the flyovers! This road pushing into their yards isn’t just a ground road, it’s flyovers, elevated high enough to go over the main road. What they’re asking for, at the very least, is some kind of sound/light barriers.

What should be of concern also is that the airport is acting as project managers for this project. They run the whole thing, spend their money AND the government’s money, but are not hampered by things governments are obliged to observe. Things like accountability, truthfulness, lack of conflict of interest (!), acting for the benefit of the ordinary people. Whose interests do you reckon the airport cares about? This is a very worrying precedent, letting a land developer run a public project.

The article in the Canberra Times (forum) on Saturday was excellent. It highlighted all the issues, and made it clear how the airport has done what it’s done, as it is free of pretty-much ANY planning controls, from local or federal government. It has held the people and the government of the ACT to ransom while it has built a CBD and then “generously” offered to put in some money and run the road project.

The scale of the work propsed is too small to do much to fix the traffic problems there, by the way. What it amounts to is a grandifying of the airport entrance. Majura Road, fairbairn and Moreshead will still be affected by the extra traffic, and will still be locked up at rush hour. The federal Labor opposition has recognised this, and has a proposal to deal with Majura and Moreshead if they get in. NSW electorates in Eden Monaro and Hume are also interested and supportive, as many from those areas commute in to work in Canberra and get caught up in the traffic, so they’re supporting the spending of federal money on this.

It has become clear why the airport is kicking in the money towards this road. The airport money has gone towards the design of the road. Thus the road has been designed to give maximum benefit to the airport and resume maximum land from the government/pialligo residents.

This is a scandal. I hope the ACT govt tells them where to go and gets some independent plans drawn up. 11m of land from the paddocks at the airport is nothing, but 11 m from people’s boundary fences is quite a lot.

The federal hwy was widened to go through a friend’s front yard and it was a nightmare. They probably only lost 11 metres but suddenly the highway seemed like it was just outside the house.
Likewise there will be a large volume of traffic going down the pilligo roads.
The airport is getting our money from the govt to build an unplanned road the airport has created the need for, the least they could do is contribute a tiny bit of their massive land area towards a better road.

OpenYourMind29:07 am 06 Nov 07

Not sure if its true or not, but I’ve heard some people say that Terry Snow has intentionally built right up to his boundary on Fairbairn Ave so that any future roadwork can’t be on his land.

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