Um, WTF?

Today the Greens have announced a city council election campaign proposal to install 200 new pedestrian crossings over the next four years. The LNP Deputy Mayor says this is 'radical.' According to her, installing pedestrian crossings and bike lanes is an 'attack on motorists.'

This response is hilarious (and kinda unhinged).

She says our proposal is 'reckless.'

Newsflash for Councillor Adams: Expecting kids who are walking to school to cross the road WITHOUT the safety of a proper pedestrian crossing is reckless. Asking cyclists to ride along 60km/h roads without safe separation from cars is reckless. Insisting that our city's transport network can continue to revolve around petrol-powered cars that generate high carbon emissions and cook the planet is reckless.

This kind of reaction to a modest, sensible proposal paints a really clear picture of just how hostile to active transport the current LNP council administration really is. We are dealing with a group of councillors who ACTIVELY OPPOSE basic pedestrian safety upgrades.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A comment he put in the replies to his post:

Someone asked which road projects would be cut to fund this idea...

It's important to stress that we're not proposing to cut the road maintenance budget. We're proposing to stop spending so much money on widening roads and building new roads - that's very different to resurfacing existing roads.

This year's council budget allocates $103 million towards road network resurfacing (slightly higher than usual because they're still repairing damage from February 2022). Usually the LNP allocate about $90 million per year towards this. (See page 260 of the budget: https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06/20230612-Annual-Plan-and-Budget-2023-24_0.pdf)

Personally I think the council should be INCREASING its resurfacing budget slightly (maybe keep it at $100 million on an ongoing basis) because it's cheaper and more sustainable to resurface roads BEFORE they get too cracked and the potholes get too big.

As to the question of which roads wouldn't get widened...

Each year, the LNP announces new road-widening and intersection-widening projects. They have a VERY long list of corridors that they'd like to widen. (You can see just a small selection of this list in the LGIP Schedule of Works documents - https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/planning-and-building/planning-guidelines-and-tools/local-government-infrastructure-plan/lgip-components-extrinsic-material-and-supporting-documents)

This image is an excerpt from the 2023-24 budget and gives you a flavour of the sorts of costs of these major road projects. For this financial year, there's over $35 million of road-widening/intersection capacity expansion just in those four projects in that image, with more spending in subsequent years.

There are many many more road-widening projects in the budget under headings like 'Suburban Corridor Modernisation,' 'Major Road Network Improvements,' 'Better Roads for Brisbane,' 'Congestion Busting Projects' etc.

The LNP's total spend on road-widening and intersection-widening varies a little bit from year to year, but currently averages about $250-$300 million per year (depends a bit on how you define and quantify projects that involve a degree of road-widening but also other kinds of improvements). Almost all of that money is being wasted on road-widening that won't reduce congestion and will simply encourage more cars onto the road.

Many of the intersections that the LNP are spending money on DO need to be redesigned to improve safety, add bike lanes, improve pedestrian connectivity etc, but they don't need to be widened. They could be upgraded to prioritise active transport for a fraction of the cost (and those intersection redesign costs are factored into the $90 million/year we're proposing to put towards bike infrastructure).

So I can't give you a specific list of which roads won't be widened, because we don't know for sure exactly which roads the LNP would like to widen next. All I can say is that each year they consistently spend a couple hundred million widening different roads, and we would stop doing that.

[–] trk@aussie.zone 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

The Greens are the voice of reason, and the LNP are the unhinged ones. Has it always been this way? Seems weird that the older I get, the less the LNP appeals to me. Or should I say, the more it disgusts me. I thought it was supposed to be the opposite - as wrinkles and greys appear, I suddenly start wanting to tune in the Sky News and start cheering on whatever conservative bollocks the Liberals are pushing that night.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I've read articles from the US and the UK that suggest that the way you feel is actually part of a larger trend where gen X and later are bucking the traditional transition to conservatism as they age.

Good. I'm all for it.

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The Greens are the voice of reason, and the LNP are the unhinged ones. Has it always been this way?

Not really. Though, it's also pretty likely that my own politics has evolved over the decades. In the 80's the Greens were seen as a slightly less militant environmental organisation as Greenpeace. Interested only in environmental issues, and nothing else. It made them pretty unelectable - party because the environment was nowhere as big an issue as it is today, but mostly because they had no policies on anything else (like defense, economy etc).

Looking back though, I'm not even sure that was true - it may have just been the perception. There were no websites to look up policies on, the only way to really get across their policies was to get onto their mailing list (snail mail).

The Greens started to become a viable party sometime around the time of Mark Latham being Labor leader. Mr Howard was busy selling off Telstra, holding a referrendum on the Monarchy and about to introduce GST. And the Labor leader was an unhinged madman.

[–] zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Republic Referendum was Nov 1999

GST came into effect Jul 2000

Latham was opposition leader Dec 2003 - Jan 2005

Not saying your point is incorrect, but just wanted to copy-paste for those like me who read your post and think those events don't quite line up. Also, I'd just point out that Howard did win an election in Nov 2001, after the referendum and GST, before Latham. Again, this doesn't directly contradict your point, just noting that there wasn't ever really a GST vs Latham election, as I'd think the question had sort of been decided. But I don't actually know whether Latham campaigned on it or not, off the top of my head, so I could be totally wrong there.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

nowhere as big an issue as it is today

They were acting then to prevent the issues that we are currently facing, and people regarded them as a fringe group. Now we've just had the hottest year on record and BCC is acting as if building more roads is the answer, and that adding pedestrian crosswalks is "radical".

" Its the end of the world as we know it " /song