GOOD on Liberal MLA Elizabeth Kikkert for pressing the ACT government to release the report on the intersection of Ginninderra and Tillyard Drives.

Road safety at this point has long been an issue and the subject of many calls for remediation of the half-baked works at this accident-prone, busy intersection some years ago.

I recall bending the ears of then chairman of the Black Spot Committee, Dr Andrew Leigh MP, about the preferable need for a roundabout rather than what was obvious to regular users – but seemingly blind to traffic engineers, probably cash strapped – that a minimal realignment of turn lanes would be ineffective.

The continuing crash rate bears this out. Dr Leigh’s response was enlightening for its lack of local-traffic knowledge – a roundabout was not needed because eastbound traffic would only reach about 60 km/h coming from the Florey Drive intersection!

He seemed not interested in my laughable response that 80 km/h was the minimum half way along and trying to weave through the volume of vehicles from Ginninderra to Tillyard and vice versa was a nightmare! Since then, the joint Emergency Services station at Charnwood has been added to the mix as has the volume of peak-hour traffic connecting through Tillyard out to Gungahlin and the growth of Dunlop.

Len Goodman, Belconnen

Non-Brits worth remembering

WONDERFUL article (as always) by Robert Macklin (“The disgrace that is Tasmania”, CN October 12), on the “foreign object” to Australia’s south.

But where does that leave two definitely non-British Tasmanians – the late conservationist photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis? Are they to share the collective shame instead of “glorifying” the place?

Meta Sterns, via email