Last week, we were contacted by Andrew Taylor from the Sydney Morning Herald about a blog post about traffic congestion on the Spit Bridge. In 2015, our managing partner, Cristina Lynn, wrote about the Spit and Manly Roads bottleneck caused by the bridge openings to allow for boat passage.
Six years later, the SMH article ‘Traffic nightmare’: How a single boat can paralyse one of Sydney’s busiest roads reminds us that the issue remains the same, if not worse.
Approval has now been received for a new tunnel to be built, but it remains to be seen how much traffic this will take away from the Spit Bridge route particularly for non-business travel (i.e. going to the beach).
“It is clearly unrealistic to imagine that one could stop boat owners from accessing the harbour. At the same time, I believe that commuters and visitors have had the raw end of the stick for many years and the solution requires significant political willpower both at local and state level”, Cristina said.
“The solution would need to be multi-faceted, perhaps by increasing the use of the waterways as travel mode. Why are ferry services being reduced instead of increased for example? Adopting clearways on weekdays and weekends along Spit Road would also increase the road capacity” she concludes.
Image credit: SMH