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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Park the tram and take the O-Bahn to Woden!

An Adelaide bus runs on the guided concrete tracks of the express O-Bahn system… no overhead wires nor dedicated rolling stock.

Letter writer IAN PEARSON, of Barton, says save the tram money and build an O-Bahn track to Woden, it works well in Adelaide.

COLUMNIST Ian Meikle (“Seven Days”, CN, February 20) has highlighted the ACT government’s apparent willingness to endlessly, and perhaps unnecessarily, spend precious ACT funds on light rail.  

Maybe, just maybe, the costs and just plain difficulties already identified, (let alone those we don’t yet know about), with getting trams to the lake (to say nothing about actually getting across the lake) are signs that light rail may not be the best public transport option between Civic and Woden.   

If we collectively ignore those signs it will be at an enormous cost to ACT ratepayers who will foot the bill for pursuing the “get the tram across the lake at any cost” folly.

Clearly, we need an affordable, environmentally sustainable way of getting a large number of passengers between Woden and Civic.   

However, that doesn’t automatically mean we need a tram to provide that service.   

What about considering an O-Bahn arrangement, which works so well in Adelaide?   

The concrete track would be limited to the central reservation along Adelaide Avenue and Yamba Drive.   

However, unlike the fixed track, single option of a tram, after coming off the concrete track electrically powered O-Bahn buses would have the flexibility of following any number of routes into Civic or Woden Town Centre.   

Surely such an alternative is worthy of serious consideration by both major political parties (and even the Greens) and the costs of such an option should be assessed before we are committed to yet another major capital works project that takes scarce funding away from the ACT’s other spending priorities.   

Stop this from being a divisive political issue and get on with providing the government (and effective opposition) that the ACT so badly needs!

Ian Pearson, Barton

Five-hour wait to see specialist

COLUMNIST Robert Macklin is quite right to recognise that medical specialists are “gods” (“How long should you have to wait for a doctor?”, CN, February 27). 

However, his specialist was still one of the minor ones wasting his time by waiting only 1 hour and 12 minutes before being granted an audience. 

I used to take my old mother-in-law quite often to a specialist and we waited up to 5 hours and 35 minutes. Try to beat that one, Robert!

Klaus Inveen, via citynews.com.au

Wait and you shall receive… 

RE Robert Macklin’s column “How long should you wait for a doctor?” (CN, February 27): Wow! 42 whole precious minutes of the gentleman’s time when he could be at home typing his latest article!

Presumably he has never kept anyone waiting for him while he rushes to meet his deadline. Let he who is without blame cast the first stone, eh? 

I’m not a doctor. I’m a citizen of this great country where we are SO lucky to have the medical facilities that we do. 

A few moments of meditation and perhaps, time to read what Brad Pitt’s been up to of late (if one has forgotten to pack “War and Peace”) is surely not such a bad thing is it? Especially if the doctor (who has spent years qualifying for her/his position in society which she/he chose specifically because they enjoy making a positive difference by helping people) is delayed slightly with a prior patient who has an obviously more significant health problem than Mr. Macklin… who was able to walk away and not be treated!

It is frustrating but we have to factor extra time into these visits. 

Wait like the rest of us mere mortals and your turn will come!

Lynda Wells, via email 

Exploiting property development

“CANBERRA is growing but how should we accommodate this growth?” – that’s the title of a welcome upcoming forum (Albert Hall, 6pm, March 23) convened by former Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and Dr. Khalid Ahmed, a former ACT Treasury director, both now academics. 

It’s not just the question of accommodating the growth, but also the quality and affordability of it, and housing generally.

Neoliberalism (a resurgent, laissez faire, free-market, feudalistic capitalism) has infected planning and development, notably “densification”, meant to limit suburban sprawl blight (actually not so much present here, with our dispersed town centres).

Property development has been systematically over-exploited by banks, developers, realtors, speculators, landlords and local governments craving more and more rates revenue – resulting in: 

  • a property-biased economy; 
  • the rise of the transient profiteering developer; 
  • relentless housing unaffordability; 
  • deliberate supply shortages; 
  • corruption; 
  • cramped, dingy accommodation standards (justified by references to crowded global cities); 
  • ugliness;
  • and the diminution of public and private open spaces.   

Informed micro cures are needed, such as, briefly: selling suburban land only to bona-fide owner-occupiers; the formation of some bodies corporate before the event, as “owner-developers” (helped by professional consultants); mandating larger, sunny, private and public open spaces; and banning internal bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms, (yes, all three, thus enabling better outlooks; energy-saving and wellbeing-improving natural light and ventilation; and more liveable building typologies). 

Any rates revenue diminution, related to the necessary land value corrections, could be compensated by, say, a modest dedicated increase in the GST.

Jack Kershaw, Kambah

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One Response to Park the tram and take the O-Bahn to Woden!

Meg says: 10 March 2020 at 10:04 pm

Having waited 18 months to get an appointment with a DERMATOLOGIST and similar with 2 other “Specalists” I’d be happy to tolerate a 2 hour wait to actually get in to see a Doctor. Canberra Hospital called me late last year to ask if l still needed the appointments and when l said yes the response was “Your kidding”. I advised l was not, was then told they would get back to me asap with info. I’m still waiting. Our systems stink and then we are expected to be grateful after years of pain and misery.

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