Row row row your boat | Thursday, June 01, 2006 |
Driving to work is something that we'd not done for sometime before moving out here. In London, Mayor Ken is somewhat hostile to motorists for which he is to be applauded. Since his tenure began, the congestion charge and other road management schemes have made the capital a much better place to get around on foot, by bike and critically, by bus.
The same can't be said for Sydney, where the admission that you don't own a car puts you in the same category as an illegal immigrant whom you just caught in intimate relations with your prize Daschund.
Anyway this isn't a gripe about public transport, more a comment on driving to work.
In this part of town they are very keen on variable width roads (one's where the number of lanes in each direction changes depending on the time of day). We're obliged to go over Spit Bridgeto get to the city. The road either side of the actual bridge is in total, six lanes.
Obviously, it follows on that the bridge is but four. So in the morning the city bound get 3 of the four via a series of rubbery road markers and bollards that some herbert in a truck has to lay out by hand, then collect a few hours later. In the evening it's the reverse.
Up by Neutral Bay, the same happens, except it's a big movable centre crash barrier that looks like concrete but seems more likely to be a high density plastic of some sort.
The harbour bridge is worst of all. That's probably eight or ten lanes and only the warm embrace of the green X or the icy stare of the red X keep the lanes of traffic hurtling towards each other a somewhere between sixty (the speed limit), and one hundred kph apart. You really need to keep your wits about you. Fortunately, we take a left hand exit (Falcon St) so there's seldom a reason to be that far over, but still.
Getting on the bridge is a bit like pinball. We've not quite figured out exactly which entrance drops you onto it quite where yet, so it's a bit like pulling back the, er, pully thing on a pinball table and ending up in play with things happening all around you.
All of this is undoubtably fascinating but largely incidental. All I was really going to say was that one of the things that you don't see in London, or in my experience in the UK, is lots of cars with canoe (or more likely surf-ski) carriers on the roof.
It's just different, that's all.
The same can't be said for Sydney, where the admission that you don't own a car puts you in the same category as an illegal immigrant whom you just caught in intimate relations with your prize Daschund.
Anyway this isn't a gripe about public transport, more a comment on driving to work.
In this part of town they are very keen on variable width roads (one's where the number of lanes in each direction changes depending on the time of day). We're obliged to go over Spit Bridgeto get to the city. The road either side of the actual bridge is in total, six lanes.
Obviously, it follows on that the bridge is but four. So in the morning the city bound get 3 of the four via a series of rubbery road markers and bollards that some herbert in a truck has to lay out by hand, then collect a few hours later. In the evening it's the reverse.
Up by Neutral Bay, the same happens, except it's a big movable centre crash barrier that looks like concrete but seems more likely to be a high density plastic of some sort.
The harbour bridge is worst of all. That's probably eight or ten lanes and only the warm embrace of the green X or the icy stare of the red X keep the lanes of traffic hurtling towards each other a somewhere between sixty (the speed limit), and one hundred kph apart. You really need to keep your wits about you. Fortunately, we take a left hand exit (Falcon St) so there's seldom a reason to be that far over, but still.
Getting on the bridge is a bit like pinball. We've not quite figured out exactly which entrance drops you onto it quite where yet, so it's a bit like pulling back the, er, pully thing on a pinball table and ending up in play with things happening all around you.
All of this is undoubtably fascinating but largely incidental. All I was really going to say was that one of the things that you don't see in London, or in my experience in the UK, is lots of cars with canoe (or more likely surf-ski) carriers on the roof.
It's just different, that's all.
