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Your views: on bikeways, rail privatisation, Bight oil, population and recycling

Today, readers comment on Adelaide City Council’s bikeway dithering, who decides to privatise Adelaide’s trains, Bight oil drilling, population growth, and that keen recycler Larry the Victorian.

Feb 26, 2020, updated Feb 26, 2020
Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Commenting on the story: More city council back-pedalling on east-west bikeway

Regarding the ACC’s current preferred option for the east-west bikeway along Pirie and Waymouth Streets, there is some history to consider.

The council’s first attempt to construct an east-west bikeway was the Sturt Street project, started in 2009 and dismantled in 2010 as an inappropriate solution.

Similarly the Frome Street bikeway version one, rushed for completion to showcase the VeloCity congress of 2014, also turned out to be an inappropriate solution.

The ACC admitted they’d got both attempts wrong and offered a “mea culpa” in 2016 for wasting ratepayers dollars on these earlier solutions.

However the Frome Street bikeway version two was an excellent solution and when completed to Rundle Street in August 2018, it provided an outcome that was admired by most stakeholders.

Over the past two years the ACC’s planners have vacillated between Flinders/Franklin and Pirie/Waymouth as an east-west solution.

May I suggest that the ACC reconsider their current plans for an east-west bikeway and return its attention to the Flinders St/Franklin St proposal, where the road width provides plenty of space for cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

Unlike the Pirie/Waymouth option which involves very narrow carriageways. – Michael Zerman

I appreciate that not every CBD business is a cafe dying to make coffees for everyone, but in the same breath, I can’t help but suspect that sometimes the feared impacts on businesses from separated bike lanes are somewhat false objections, perhaps based on little more than the desire to retain parking at the front door or similar for their own purposes. 

I’m quite sure that sometimes the fears are genuine and with merit. I’m just suggesting that sometimes the merit might be a little flimsy, too. 

Further, perhaps some of the businesses along the route, whichever it ultimately may be, might choose to view that the glass in question might indeed be half full rather than half empty? 

Of course it depends on the nature of the business, but perhaps there might be opportunity to cash in on the population riding past? 

Just a thought. – Bernhard Sayer

What is it about the ACC and the blind worship of cars and bricks and mortar?  

Ah, income, to be spent on botched projects such as decorative streetscaping, an art which seems to have escaped our councils generally.

While Adelaide burns under the shadow of climate change and vehicle emissions, council can’t find a way to add a bicycle lane in the CBD after years of deliberation. WTF? – Robbie Brechin

Looking at the road cross sections, I’m surprised that the option of putting the bike lanes in the median strips hasn’t been considered.

Not only for this project but others as well.

The median strip is an underutilised piece of road real estate, and converting this to bike lanes with 150mm high kerbings would still offer protection for riders, access for pedestrian without removing car parks and expensively redesigning bus stops.

Might mean a few turn rights for cars ie Grote/Gray St might be removed, but could still be achieved.

Obviously some thought about traversing Victoria Square needs to made, but as Victoria Square seems to be ongoing work in progress with ideas, who knows what could be achieved. – Mark Liebelt

Commenting on the story: Adelaide rail privatisation plan rolls on

Surely something this irreversible and relevant to so many people should have been a stated election manifesto item, to allow people to support or decline this policy.

This seems way to big to be an accountant’s decision, and not what I think democracy is, or should be. – Alan Chalmerz

Commenting on the story: Equinor gives up oil drilling quest in Bight

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Thanks to Bunna Lawrie, Wirangu people and all the many environmentalists who saved our incredible Bight region of SA.

Please now get behind saving the food bowl of SA and our farming land and transport areas of the Australian federal government to dump radioactive waste in the Kimba region of Eyre Peninsula. Michele Madigan

Commenting on the story: Richardson: The fraught politics of SA’s death spiral

Populate or perish is rather 2008. The effects of years of ‘quantatitive peopleing’ is beginning to show it’s less than beneficial effects for the rest of Australia. 

Stagnant wage growth will not be improved through greater immigration. Let South Australia be the one state that does not buy into the population Ponzi, instead let’s focus on creating a tight labour market.

High demand for workers and short supply is the most effective way to share the wealth. 

The issue naturally is that big business has come to rely on cheap workers, and the property barons have come to rely on mass immigration as a source of gullible consumers. 

It’s honestly quite surprising to still see pro-population articles springing up. Most talking heads who have previously backed it, are now hunkering down readying their reputations for the ensuing years of damage they have caused. – Bob Pitt

Commenting on the story: Larry the Victorian makes up to $3000 a week illegally cashing in on SA’s recycling scheme

Always wondered why more Victorians don’t hop the border to take advantage of the bottle deposit schemes in other states.

Presumably a lot more of us do than most people realise?

Why is Victoria so slow coming to the recycling party? Preventing waste is better than recycling it. – Michael  Czajka

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We’ll publish the best comments in a regular “Reader Views” post. Your comments can be brief, or we can accept up to 350 words, or thereabouts.                   

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