Bruce highway road trip

 A few days ago we made our first Australian road trip. From Brisbane to Airlie Beach on a total distance of more than 1200 kilometres if you include the deviations to other beach side locations like Hervey Bay or Emu Park. And that’s just the one direction total distance. The trip was very interesting through the most beautiful landscape of central Queensland. 

The basic route from Brisbane up north is through the (in)famous Bruce highway. When I first heard of Bruce highway I though of Bruce Almighty and in certain parts of the trip I wished that I had Bruce Nolan’s abilities to transform things around me.

The thing I wanted to transform the most was the road itself. Bruce highway, named after the former Queensland and federal politician Henry Adam Bruce who was the state Minister for Works when the highway was named after him, in the mid 1930s. And in some parts Bruce highway seems to have remained in 1930’s.

The first part of Bruce highway, from Brisbane to Noosa Heads is a dual carriageway and at that point is that the good news for motorists ends. That is the same point that the good news for Queensland wildlife ends as well. I haven’t seen so many dead animals, mainly kangaroos in the side of the road, ever before. It seems that the “respect for our wildlife” signs don’t do much help here. The highway is a regular deathtrap for so many wildlife animals and it is very strange that it lucks protective fencing especially at some parts that passes through the forest.

Unfortunately Bruce highway raises serious safety issues to drivers and the innovative fatigue – trivia signs don’t seem to help so much. They are really interesting and they provide some trivia knowledge about Queensland but they can’t be considered a safety measure.

 

On the contrary safety measure can be considered the median treatment on some parts of the highway on the road from Curra to Cooroy. 

 

Safety measures are also the overtaking lanes. Especially these were a lot of help when I had a B-double truck tailgating me at a speed of more than 100 km/h. 

 

The Bruce highway is used by up to 170,000 vehicles a day. While it is just 32% of the total length of Queensland highways it is accounting for the 51% of casualty crashes during 2003-2007 and 59% of deaths. These statistics are only second worst to the Pacific Highway that links Brisbane with Gold Cost. 

Queensland Government is working with Australian Government to upgrade Bruce Highway. Together they have developed Bruce Highway Upgrade Strategy, which identifies priority investments for the Bruce Highway. Over the next 20 years Bruce Highway will see 340 kilometres of highway duplication, bridge replacements, intersection upgrades and other safety improvements. 

I am afraid that in a state that railroad is not much developed, these upgrades are not enough and the level of service that Bruce highway provides will keep undermining growth in Queensland and will keep putting people and animals in great danger.

Olympic Games traffic

I am watching the Olympic Games 2012  opening ceremony and as always my mind goes to transport and traffic. 

The Games being such a huge event, involving thousands of participating athletes, coaches and spectators are such a great challenge for the transportation planners and traffic engineers of each hosting city. 

Even in the hosting city selection procedure, transport and traffic is the second most important aspect of the candidate cities’ proposal after venues. Cities are struggling to persuade the “immortals” that they can manage traffic during the Olympic games in a way that not only will be effective but also sustainable. The games provide the opportunity for the cities to build new transportation system like the Athens Metro and tram. 

But even big transport infrastructure projects like public transportation systems and construction of new motorways and arterials are not enough to ensure that athletes would not need two or three hours of travel to get to their Olympic venue. Transport planning, traffic management and mobility management plays a big role in this task. After all, transportation network capacity is not designed to support all this additional demand for travel. 

One of the traffic management measures used, is sending a significant percentage of the Olympic city’s residents away from the city or having them stay at home. Usually this is achieved by giving civil servants mandatory leave and generally by making it so much more difficult for people to travel to their usual every day destination, so they will prefer to go on holidays or stay home. Again Athens was an example for this with so many Athenians spending their days during the Olympic Games in the islands.

The objective is to enable athletes and officials to get to their events on time. This is accomplished by installing Olympic lanes. Roads or traffic lanes reserved for accredited Games vehicles – athletes, officials and of course sponsors – as well as emergency vehicles. In London there are 30 miles of Olympic Lanes installed mainly on some of the city’s main arterial roads, marked by white Olympic rings painted on to the road. 

No one else is allowed in these lanes, not even black taxis or bicycles and this raises discomfort, protests and even extreme police actions that don't exactly promote the Olympic spirit.  

Trying to achieve optimum traffic management is not an easy task as some of London’s biggest traffic engineering gaffes show. 

Olympic Games have blown out of proportion during the last decades thanks to the commercialization spirit. The sponsors and the often greedy national Olympic committees push to include more sports and more athletes to the Olympic Games and finally cities that host the games do not benefit from them overall.At least it seems that they benefit from some improvement to their transport systems and the added experience in mobility management.

Traffic and wildlife

A few days ago we went with the kids at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to visit this great place and view up close Queensland wildlife. 

tree kangaroo

cassowary

And when we were admiring the tree kangaroos and the cassowary  I remembered how impressed I was when I first saw the wildlife warning signs.

kangaroo - camel -cassowary - wild horse - koala - wombat

And there are also the "care for our wildlife" information signs.

echidna - tree kangaroo - duck - small bird - possum - lizard

In Greece there is only one wildlife sign depicting a deer and it is representative of all wildlife animals even though there are only a few deers left; some in Mount Parnitha near Athens and more in Mount Rodopi near my former hometown Kavala. 

 

There is also a warning sign with a cow on it representing all livestock animals. 

This is similar to the livestock warning sign in QLD.

Unfortunately there is no sign depicting a bear which is the animal more endangered by road traffic in Greece. Just yesterday two young brown bears were killed in the road near Kastoria another northern Greek city that I love and have family at. 

Wildlife protection is one of the most important sectors in environmental protection and sustainable development. Sustainable mobility can play a big part in this cause not only by putting up signs to warn drivers for the presence of wildlife but mainly through planning and design of infrastructure that does not invade wildlife habitat and protects these sensitive ecosystems from collateral damage.

BRT or LRT? Busway or Light Rail?

Few days ago I went back to the Gold Coast for a technical seminar on the new Light Rail Project that is now under construction there. The stage one of the project will cost $ 1 billion to deliver a 13 km route between the Gold Coast University Hospital and Broadbeach. This new public transportation system will commence operations in 2014 well ahead of the Commonwealth Games that Gold Coast will host in 2018. The system in this first stage will consist of 14 trams and 16 stations and it is expected to move 50,000 passengers a day with a capacity to cater for up to 75,000 passengers a day.

The trams are constructed by Bombardier and are 43.5 metres long, 2.65 metres wide and can travel at speeds up to 70 km/h. The trams are the latest generation of FLEXITY 2 Light Rail Vehicles that are used in Croydon and Docklands in London, Nottingham and Manchester, Blackpool and Lancashire. The unique feature for the Gold Coast trams will be of course the Surfboard racks.

This new system will be the first light rail system in Queensland. Previous attempts to propose planning and construction of such a system in Queensland’s capital city Brisbane were unsuccessful. Public spending in transportation is directed to the bus system like the CityGlider and CityCats. 

In the traffic engineering – transportation planning community there is a big and long standing debate on the benefits of light rail systems against bus rapid transit systems. The BRT or busway as they are called in Australia is at the moment the preferred choice in Brisbane. Personally I am not sure that there is a clearly superior system between the two. Probably it depends on the urban environment and the characteristics that those systems are to be designed and operate. And while busways are usually less expensive to implement and more flexible and adaptive to changes, the light rail systems give the city a world class image lift and support residential and commercial development along its stations.  

After all, the way busways work in Brisbane, some times they give the impression that we do have a light rail.

  

Charming cycling? Not in a helmet!

Riding a bicycle is one of the most sustainable mobility choices. Cities and people can greatly benefit, if they can raise the mode share of cycling. Australia in general and Brisbane specifically has a very small bike share even thought the last few years a lot of effort has been put in increasing bicycle use. You can see all the bikeways  and shared paths on Brisbane in the maps that provide information on on-road and off-road bicycle lanes, bike shelters and cyclepods to make your ride or walk safer and more pleasant.

Yesterday there was a very interesting event in Brisbane – which unfortunately I was not able to take part. Brisbane Bike Over Speed. Cyclists in their normal cloths, their work outfit or their best suits cycled through the City and South Bank just to make the point that cycling is not only for the “hardcore - lycra wearing – Tour De France looking” cyclists. See the video of their playful ride:

Some of them were riding CityCycle bikes. CityCycle is a very good initiative that can help raise bicycle use across the city. When I first saw the yellow bikes, similar to those in Paris and in Dublin, I thought: Way to go Brisbane. The next couple of days I subscribed to City Cycle and now I use the yellow bikes regularly. That is, I try to use them every day but it seems that quite a few days I am not able to do so because I can not find a bicycle with a helmet in the bike rack. That is one of the biggest reasons that the overall daily trips of CityCyle remain so low. Dublin Councillor Andrew Montague shares his experience about the bike share system in Dublin and compares it to the one in Melbourne which is so similar to CityCycle in Brisbane. The video is from MikeRubbo artist devoted in promoting "the beauty of the body of the bike".

And then browsing about cycling and the city I found this TEDx video of   Mikael Colville-Andersen, filmmaker, photographer and urban mobility expert from Copenhangen, Denmark explaining with lots of research and data “Why We Shouldn’t Bike with a Helmet”. Interesting comments, especially those concerning Australia.

Pasadeiras

Just found a nice piece of traffic artwork by a Portuguese advertising agency Draft FCB Lisbon.
It is pedestrian (zebra) crossing painted in a street in Lisbon, Portugal as part of a "safe street week" campaign  in cooperation with The Association of Self-Mobilized Citizens ACA-M.

Source: http://cargocollective.com/filipegraca/Passadeiras-ACAM

The pedestrian crossing stripes consisted of names of pedestrians killed by cars.

Source: http://cargocollective.com/filipegraca/Passadeiras-ACAM

In both ends of the crossing is is written that 1/4 of all victims in car accidents are pedestrians.

I am sure that a lot of questions are raised regarding the actual safety of this pedestrian crossing as people may stop in the middle of the road to read the names but reports from Portugal say that no accident happened there since it was installed.

And this zebra crossing is not the only piece of pedestrian crossing artwork. Everyone knows the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road, London that made the cover of The Beatles Abbey Road album.

Abbey Road studios that was the place that The  Beatles recorded that album has now a web camera pointed on that crossing. Check it out to see tourists reproducing the famous cover photo.

Other famous crossings that can be found around the world and around Internet:

 Salzburg, Austria.

South Africa.

Qujiang District, Xi'an, China

 Canada.

I moved.

 It’s been a while since my last post in this blog. The reason for that is that I moved. That is, I changed the house that me and my family lives. We now live in Brisbane, closer to my workplace so no more three hours commuting every day. This is a big upgrade for my quality of life just from this move.

But then when I started thinking of the word move in English I remembered my last project back in Greece – Mmove and the mobility management toolbox.

So I found it interesting that it is actually the same word that has all those different meanings. Wiktionery has listed the following:

move (third-person singular simple present moves, present participle moving, simple past and past participle moved)

1. To change place or posture; to stir; to go, in any manner, from one place or position to another

A ship moves rapidly.

I was sitting on the sofa for a long time, I was too lazy to move.

2. To act; to take action; to stir; to begin to act; as, to move in a matter.

Come on guys, let's move, there's work to do!

3. To change residence; to remove, as from one house, town, or state, to another; to go and live at another place. See also move out and move in

I decided to move to the country for a more peaceful life.

They moved closer to work to cut down commuting time.

4. (chess, and other games) To change the place of a piece in accordance with the rules of the game.

The rook moved from a8 to a6.

My opponent's counter was moving much quicker round the board than mine.

5. To cause to change place or posture in any manner; to set in motion; to carry, convey, draw, or push from one place to another; to impel; to stir

The waves moved the boat up and down.

The horse moves a carriage.

6. To transfer (a piece or man) from one space or position to another, according to the rules of the game; as, to move a king.

She moved the queen closer to the centre of the board.

7. To excite to action by the presentation of motives; to rouse by representation, persuasion, or appeal; to influence.

This song moves me to dance.

8. To arouse the feelings or passions of; especially, to excite to tenderness or compassion, to excite, as an emotion.

That book really moved me.

9. To propose; to recommend; specifically, to propose formally for consideration and determination, in a deliberative assembly; to submit, as a resolution to be adopted; as, to move to adjourn.

I move to repel the rule regarding school obligatory school uniform.

10. (obsolete) To mention; to raise (a question); to suggest (a course of action); to lodge (a complaint).
11. (obsolete) To incite, urge (someone to do something); to solicit (someone for or of an issue); to make a proposal to.
12. (obsolete) To apply to, as for aid.

And there is also a big list of different meanings for the word move that you can find in Wikipedia.

Greek language is a lot different. So in most cases by the word move you will mean the word Μετακινώ but for moving from a house to another you would say Μετακομίζω or Μετοικίζω. But since I am traffic and transport (or should I say move) engineer I leave it for the linguists to move it further.