i have been to canberra for the last couple of days. apart from the dangerous driving displayed by most canberrans there is a common link between NSW and the ACT - the road system. example.. today i visited the australian war memorial (its a museum in canberra) sure enough there was signage to it quoting the name of the road to take but as usual the road itself had NO ACTUAL SIGNAGE IE THE NAME OF THE ROAD LOCATED IN A LOGICAL POSITION. the road signage for a road turning off to the left was actually positioned in the traffic lane opposite to the road (obscured by traffic etc) as an after thought the other most annoying problem with canberra is the inordinate number of traffic lights that plague the city (and the bums hang around them wanting to wash your car windows to pay for their next hit of heroin. these people are harmless but a damning indictment of governmental policy) please , please, please for my sanity if there is anyone who works in any higher echelon of government reading this post (unlikely), please can you mark all roads with some form of correct, logical and relevant signage. how much more petrol and time is going to spent driving around in ever decreasing circles because of the half wits responsible for road signage? the road i live in has a road sign completely obscured by branches and whats worse is marked "XXXXXX street" when it is infact "XXXX road" the worse thing about driving in sydney apart from the same problems as canberra is the lack of white paint marking lanes, stop and give way markings. its bad enough during the day, whats worse is when the light falls and it starts raining, at this point no one knows where the hell they're supposed to be driving.
well i do catch the bus! the problem is that i don't always catch the bus i spread my transport options the problem is that car or not, marking the streets helps pedestrians too. nowadays if you've got a gps system you don't need any road signage or signage on your house the gps takes you directly to a named address. maybe this is the way of the future a city with no obvious signage. roll on progress.
Ha. I just moved to Canberra a few weeks ago from NSW. I hate the speed limits most (the speed on Northbourne ave, for example, is ridiculously slow).
i briefly visited a big brand new shopping mall in canberra that has been grafted onto an old car park. not only was it horrendously planned but you had to pay for the priveledge of driving around it, again in ever decreasing circles. if you lived there you'd probably be ok. the town centre is bursting at the seams with traffic lights. i wouldn't live there if you paid me. even sydney with its goat/ horse tracks turned into major cbd roads are more logical and organised. maybe instead of paying a whole heap of people to "design" the road network there they should have just allowed a horse to wander around for a couple of months and tracked its movements. the worse thing about sydney roads is the planners fascination for throwing roads up incredibly steep hills instead of just making the roads follow the contour. there is only one road in the whole of sydney that does this for most of its length - Edgecliffe road, simply because it follows the cliff. i'll end here or i'll end up talking about the holes that open up in the roads as soon as it rains.
belco or civic mall? sounds like belco me 2 yer the traffic on northbourn is really shitty in the morning so slow.
