Road works
Dec. 5th, 2008 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyring
My road most travelled is the one out to the airport. Every day, ten or more times, sometimes racing along at the limit, cutting the corners fine, sometimes taking it easy with passengers.
“Boy,” one said, “I’ll bet you wish you had a dollar for every time you’ve driven along this road!”
“Oddly enough,” I replied, “that’s how it works out.”
The road works have been going on for months now. The two lanes are to be upgraded to four, a new overpass and airport entrance constructed, intersections realigned...
Not to mention the roadworks inside the airport boundaries as the taxi rank is shifted, a new multi-story carpark erected, the terminal building extended...
“Every day’s a new adventure out here,” I tell the passengers, when suddenly confronted with new traffic flows that represent a radical departure from the previous day’s arrangements.
For a couple of kilometres, it’s nothing but bollards, cement barriers, diversion signs, road machinery, uneven surfaces and dust. And drivers struggling to cope with it all.
Just what I need when I’m racing someone to the airport to catch a tight flight.
But at least the promise of a new road is an improvement over what we had. It looked like a country lane, meandering along beside the Molonglo River, and passengers would ask their cabbie why he was taking them “the back way”.
It was upgraded a while back, but it remained mostly one lane each way, with a series of roundabouts where keen or crazy drivers raged for position. The increasing flow of traffic to and from the airport and the associated office park and wholesale shops frequently brought the road to a crawl, with some critical intersections choked shut.
“Another ten years,” I tell my passengers, “and this will all be four lanes.”
In reality, it’s another two weeks and it will be finished. All complete except for the obligatory Canberra road planning bottleneck, where a narrow bridge over a creek needs to be duplicated before the grand project is done.
And then, I guess, the road crews will move elsewhere in Canberra to make driving a challenge.

My road most travelled is the one out to the airport. Every day, ten or more times, sometimes racing along at the limit, cutting the corners fine, sometimes taking it easy with passengers.
“Boy,” one said, “I’ll bet you wish you had a dollar for every time you’ve driven along this road!”
“Oddly enough,” I replied, “that’s how it works out.”
The road works have been going on for months now. The two lanes are to be upgraded to four, a new overpass and airport entrance constructed, intersections realigned...
Not to mention the roadworks inside the airport boundaries as the taxi rank is shifted, a new multi-story carpark erected, the terminal building extended...
“Every day’s a new adventure out here,” I tell the passengers, when suddenly confronted with new traffic flows that represent a radical departure from the previous day’s arrangements.
For a couple of kilometres, it’s nothing but bollards, cement barriers, diversion signs, road machinery, uneven surfaces and dust. And drivers struggling to cope with it all.
Just what I need when I’m racing someone to the airport to catch a tight flight.
But at least the promise of a new road is an improvement over what we had. It looked like a country lane, meandering along beside the Molonglo River, and passengers would ask their cabbie why he was taking them “the back way”.
It was upgraded a while back, but it remained mostly one lane each way, with a series of roundabouts where keen or crazy drivers raged for position. The increasing flow of traffic to and from the airport and the associated office park and wholesale shops frequently brought the road to a crawl, with some critical intersections choked shut.
“Another ten years,” I tell my passengers, “and this will all be four lanes.”
In reality, it’s another two weeks and it will be finished. All complete except for the obligatory Canberra road planning bottleneck, where a narrow bridge over a creek needs to be duplicated before the grand project is done.
And then, I guess, the road crews will move elsewhere in Canberra to make driving a challenge.

![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 04:17 pm (UTC)