Alinga Street improvement explained

Tch. Seriously – what’s the matter with you people?

Can’t you see the different colour of the footpath between the drawing and the photo? That’s at least $1.8M worth of footpath paint!

I wonder how much the “artist’s depiction of the improvements” cost …

Typical ACT Government, upgrading a footpath and completely ignoring the pedestrian and traffic arrangements of the intersection of Allinga and West Row/Moore St which is one of the most chaotic and dangerous intersections in the City.

There is 10+ near miss accidents at that intersection everyday and it comes to a 4 way stop during peak hours due to the uncontrolled layout and pedestrian crossings on the side roads. But replacing some footpaths is clearly more important than improving road safety.

The upgrade of footpaths at Rudd and Moore Sts is just as ridiculous, improving footpaths but not the intersection where there have been numerous accidents in the past year due to the poor visibility from Rudd into Moore St. The diagrams indicate that the proposed upgrade will make it a bigger danger by planting trees close to the roadside.

Typical of Stanhope and his desire to just make things pretty instead of spending the money to make things safer.

Interesting that when the dud crossing was a piece of roadside art last year (pretending to be restoration work), they didn’t install any barriers to stop teenage wags from throwing rocks from it into the traffic below.

The old overpass to the old Belconnen bus depot did have this. Might be a reflection on the class of character in Civic… or a demonstration of how many people actually use the Civic overpass.

The bus shelters are being installed and paid for by ADHSEL. According to their website:

“Adshel is the leading provider of advertising-funded street furniture solutions in Australia and New Zealand.”

The cost is as high as it is because of the number of bureaucrats necessary to complete the job and the number of unimportant nobodies who need to be paid to sign paperwork to make it happen.

It actually looks like the existing bike racks (under the stairs) have just moved about 20 metres to the right.

Shame the artist didn’t depict the massive pothole as well.

I note how they meticulously copied the four real people from the picture, but then had to add about 30 more people to the scene, put funky coloured clothes on them all and insert a blue sky to make it seem more vibrant.

ainsliebraddon said :

Is this really how much all this work costs? Can anyone explain why this work is so expensive?

The work is so expensive because it is an ACT Government contract. Expect a budget blowout and complete ignorance of whatever generous deadline is given… maybe factor in a bridge collapse and traffic gridlock for good measure.

Canberra has to be the only capital city where the timeframe for minor road/pavement infrastructure works can be measured in months instead of weeks.

Wider footpath, more shelter for bus users, bike racks (but not lockers), seems like a nice upgrade to me.