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Thursday, August 6, 2015

To the Minister for NSW Automobile Dependency



Dear Duncan,

Until you start talking about people and not motorists, cyclists or pedestrians, Sydney will continue to be held back.

Until you focus on just people, congestion will continue to clog up our streets.

Until you embrace the concept that building roads is 'old school,' we are doomed to choke on bitumen and drown.

Roads are not the future, and you are being recklessly wilful pretending that they are.

Fossil-fuels are out just like 'fossil-politicians.'

History will not look kindly on you for perpetuating the vicious cycle of automobile dependency

Why do you remain so committed to your roads infrastructure plans?

Why do you make it so difficult for voters to walk around this city?

Why do you make it so difficult for voters to cycle around this city?

Why do you make it so difficult for voters to take public transport around this city?

What's in it for you that we don't know about?

Other transport and road 'leaders' from other global cities seem to want to make their cities liveable - you seem to want the reverse - and it's working for you, Duncan ... Sydney is in reverse.

Well done, you!

But transport and road leaders like you are supposed to be making it easier for people like me to live sustainably - and if you don't, Duncan, leaders like you will eventually be discarded.

Your current 'business-as-usual' approach to roads and transport is catastrophic, and a deadly battle for territory which in addition to being crazy and bad for the city's economics, is unconscionable in its contination of subsidies to oil-fuelled transport.

The Sydney you are envisaging is not the Sydney we want.

The Sydney you are envisaging is not a city about life.

So know this ... if your roads go ahead ... one day we will bury them - there is precedent.

Therefore, Duncan, think very carefully ...

... whilst our future lives are in your hands, your place in history is in ours.

Kind regards,
Sue (no-relation-to-tony) Abbott

2 comments:

  1. Loved that. By the way, one of the most important Indigenous leaders here was named Elijah Harper.

    Here is a rap video on the "migrant danger", featuring such clowns, er, "leaders" as Tony Abbott and Donald Trump:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUkW0kWb1x0

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  2. Cyclist simply isn't taken seriously in Australia as a legitimate form of transport. Here in Melbourne today there's an auction in my suburb and all the streets with bike lanes (main and side-streets) are chock full of parked cars blocking the lanes.

    I'd like to ask these politicians - what are the cyclists supposed to do? Get off and walk? Swerve in and out of the bike lane at risk of being hit?

    Imagine if I parked my bike in the middle of the road and told cars to go around it. That would be fair and equivalent to what cars are allowed to do. What is the point of having a bike lane if it can be blocked by vehicles whenever they wish?

    I suspect a large part of helmet law here is being able to justify these regulations, deliberately making cycling far more dangerous than it needs to be and keeping motoring the dominant form of transport, with fossil fuels the dominant (and only) fuel.

    It's unsurprising that far fewer people are willing to take up cycling here than in Paris, Amsterdam or Geneva. The way we are treated in Australia makes it impossible to commute to work, or even enjoy a weekend ride.

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