blinnov’s blog

I was hoping there would be more water in Somersby falls.

But this is nice anyway

I am officially pissed off.

Did not think that I will ever go on the wrong side on a freeway. Driving on the opposite site of F3 isn’t clearly the best way to get to feel yourself like being in Europe. In any case, the way officials handled the accident wasn’t quite European too.

I left Gordon yesterday at 10:00 pm  only to hit the tail of the most giant traffic queue I ever seen at 10:15. And, I am sure, traffic just started to barely move then. There were plenty of cars with people sleeping in them at the side of the road – they obviously decided not to bother for some more hours.

An guess what? Today’s morning TV news only said that contra-flow was implemented “several hours later”. Please note – it is the true, but there is a catch. This truth is short of some interesting details like while accident happened before noon, the contra-flow was opened only at 8:30 pm. And it was the working Monday. And all peak-hour traffic was in standstill for I don’t even want to know how many hours. See the difference? Most online news sites were citing the same bullshit, at least in the morning. Like nothing serious happened, just a bit of slow traffic on one local country road. Now, when shit finally hit the fan, they all screaming loud that “blame game has started“. Good timing, guys!

So, the F3 was still pretty much the carpark 10 hours after the accident. I would call it “The incompetence”. Obviously, someone also just did not want to take a decision.

What should have been done? I reckon, after an hour or two when it became obvious that there is no way they could move the tanker without unloading it, they should have left it alone for time being. I assume, the tanker itself was safe, but in today’s “news” they said there actually was a small leak!  The peak hour was approaching, and with huge delays already in place, opening the freeway for traffic should be their priority number one. They should have isolated the accident,  put temporary barriers and open as many lines as possible (according to photos, the tanker was only taking one line!), just to let people trough.  Also, the contra-flow had to be operational at 3:00pm the latest!

That would not only help bringing people home, it would also leave them with the whole night to do whatever they were going to do to remove the tanker without having thousands of angry and tired motorists around.

Why it did not happen – I don’t know yet. But, mind you, every incident has the first name and the last name.

P.S. I wonder if everyone who lost money because of the accident (late childcare fees,  extra petrol, you name it) should send the invoices to the RTA.

A few years ago we became proud owners of a book called “Sydney Region Outline Plan”. The book, printed in 1968 is nothing else but a large 111-page report about what Sydney and surroundings looked like back then and how they were expected to look today. Surprisingly enough, that was rather interesting reading.

In “Transport” chapter a few paragraphs were focused on that by 2000′ a second airport should be built in Sydney. No doubts it should have already happened. But it did not. I remember how amused I was when I learnt that the largest and busyiest air hub in southern hemisphere is closing for any flights every night. Well, to be honest, I could hardly imagine a modern city with the airport nearly in its center before!

Anyway, that book pointed a few options where second airport could have had been built. Of course, we already heard of options like “somewhere on West” or “in Richmond” but there was another interesting option – they were also talking about Wyong shire and even considered it as one of the prefferred options. Never happened though. Yet (?).

Well, this is all about a front cover of today’s “Central Coast Sun Weekly” – it says that the government is once again revisiting plans to build a new airport for Sydney and there  are “many feasible reasons” why it should be build in Somersby. Not far away from Wyong, but nothing new – they already shortlisted in in 1969 and there was a 500-people demonstration against it back in 1971 (see aph.gov.au).

I am not quite sure how feasible is it really – from my impression landscape here on Central Coast is anything but suitable for airports. I am not airport architect and I don’t know all the details – may be Somersby plateau is large enough for long runways required for A380, but that besides the point. Even the fact that some businesses have already backed the proposal (which is understandable) so as that it is not know yet how would it change the face of Central coast and affect the enfironment are not important yet. I rather curious about whether they decide or not finally? This discussion already seems to last for over 50 years.

Another exciting news for anyone hoping Woy Woy road will be finally fixed some time soon.

It looks like there is another “little crack” in the road. And it looks like the crack has been known since April this year but still nothing has been done. And it looks like the crack is just as little as 50 meters long and it continues to grow. And, surprisingly, it looks like the crack is caused by rainwater escaping damaged underground pipe, which happened to be situated right under that section of the road. I have a feeling that I already heard about some road been washed away by rainwater…

Anyway, according to todays “Express advocate“, the issue was addressed with “High priority”. Which apparently means nothing has been done. Yet?

Something is definitely wrong with roads on Central Coast. Have you heard that two weeks ago we were just centimeters away from another road collapse on Kariong Hill? That’s why they doing those urgent roadworks on Saturdays’ nights.

Let’s just hope this is simply a surface crack, which could easily be caused by numerous reasons but don’t usually lead to road closures; at least as far as I can judge from newspaper’s photo, it is about as serious as that. I want to go there during daytime to see it by myself. Not sure If I can scrap a moment this weekend, but may be it is the time to sell the car as driving around Coast will soon become impossible?