Rojak Timeout (by Duck's Nuts)

Just like the spicy rojak salad dish, the postings here are about anything and everything under the sun. They're meant to make you a keen, lean, lovin' Internet machine as you wait for the next story to be posted by our authors.

Today's Rojak Timeout features our newest author on the blog, Duck's Nuts. Read her profile here.



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Duck's Nuts says:

Outsiders' perception of Australians are that they are a bunch of chilled out, happy chappies with a devil-may-care attitude. That's certainly not the case when it comes to transport in Sydney.



Credit: TheGirlsNY via Flickr Creative Commons

I don't know what makes the front pages in Singapore nowadays, but I can guarantee you that traffic and public transport problems, like health and housing, are regular topics that appear on the front page of the newspapers and are the top stories of news websites almost every other day in Sydney.

So I had a bit of a chuckle when I saw this piece of paper stuck on to a timestable at a bus stop:



Whoever stuck it on certainly had a sense of humour.

But it's also symptomatic of the anger there is in Sydney about the failings of its transport infrastructure and the apparent inability of the state government to fix it.

Just a few weeks ago, a truck driver drove into one of the highway tunnels with his excavator still up. Not surprisingly, he crashed into the tunnel, scratched a mighty big hole in the ceiling, and closed it for a couple of weeks, causing traffic gridlock that affected much of the city and suburbs.

That happened on a Saturday, and all weekend, wherever I was, I could hear Sydneysiders taking about that truck driver. (Obviously, they didn't say very nice things about him.) It's like the British and their obsession with the weather.

Transport stories always rate on Sydney news websites. Just this Sunday, there was this story:

30 May - Six-car crash causes M4 mayhem



And in the past few months, there've been these:

3 February - Rain causes Sydney traffic chaos



13 April - Motorists left fuming after truck collision



30 April - Peak-hour chaos as truck jackknifes, man killed



13 May - Fuel tank leak shuts M5 lanes just before peak hour



One of the best quotes from an irate motorist was this from a December story:

11 December - Traffic delays on Harbour Bridge after crane breaks down



One user said traffic was 'Independence Day-style', referring to evacuation chaos depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster about an alien invasion.

So why is there so much traffic chaos/mayhem/crush/havoc/gridlock (so many labels hey) in Sydney? My unscientific theory is that the ageing infrastructure is too old to handle the booming population growth, estimated to reach almost 6 million by 2030. Just one accident on the major highways, there's a bottleneck, and almost instant traffic chaos. The same goes for the trains and buses.

Attempts to upgrade the transport system has been plagued by poor planning, political indecisiveness and perhaps even corruption. Some urban planning experts and architects predict that in 20 years' time, if the transport infrastructure isn't given a major overhaul, traffic will be so gridlocked that it'll take hours to get from Point A to Point B.

Does it make me miss Singapore's super efficient MRT and buses? Yes and No. I enjoy the organic and man-made chaos that is Sydney. There's no doubt that the infrastructure has to been upgraded - sooner rather than later. But it's great to be part of the public discussions about the problems, and what solutions would work.