Peter Goers: Apart from the O-Bahn which is one of the glories of SA, we heavily oppose and stuff-up public transport

From Mount Barker to Norwood to North Terrace, Adelaide stuffs up or rejects new transport fixes at every turn, writes Peter Goers.

It’s certainly not a bullet tram. It takes longer to get from the new RAH to South Terrace on the tram than it does to get from South Terrace to Glenelg. Still, the tram extension is bonzer even though it was heavily opposed, like almost everything in Adelaide.

We need more public transport. Much more. Through lack of political vision our transport solutions are either too late, too hard or ridiculously retrospective. Mount Barker was merrily allowed to develop from country town to satellite city without any regard to public transport and the stress on the SE Freeway.

Down on the plains, thanks to the triumph of the tram extension, suddenly we had tram mania. Everyone wanted trams going everywhere even though we’d ripped out all the trams in the 60s. Whoops.

Then the mooted tram to Norwood would probably mean ripping up the ironbark trees down the middle of the Parade and those trees are, apparently, more important than transport. One suspects that there’ll be a canal down the middle of Port Road before we get a tram to the Port.

The end of the O Bahn track at Tea Tree Plaza Interchange. Picture: Sam Wundke

We lost interest in trams when the entire might of the SA government (which wants a space program) couldn’t get a tram to turn right into North Terrace. Then the broke Adelaide City Council needs to get around to fixing the King William St Bridge, which can neither take trucks nor tram.

You have to change trams to go the short distance east along North Terrace and this tramline causes traffic chaos along our cultural boulevard.

Apart from the O-Bahn which is one of the glories of SA, we heavily oppose and stuff-up public transport.

The unobtrusive tunnel under the parklands to facilitate the O-Bahn bus route was, of course, heavily opposed. We got rid of the trams because the car was king. Older Adelaideans (like me) are hardwired to think of Adelaide as a big country town and we still want to go to town and park out the front of wherever we need to be. The city council still loves cars to death and had a car month last year with prizes for drivers clogging up the traffic.

Now the SA government is obsessed by widening busy intersections to send traffic more easily down the same narrow main roads: Fullarton/Cross roads and Portrush/Magill roads.

Comedian Kel Balnaves rightly says it’s impossible to drive the length of South Rd without swearing and the piecemeal development of a full South Rd expressway continues thankfully and maybe finished in a decade. It will be heavily opposed and will do nothing for public transport.

The government wants trucks to use South Rd/Cross Rd to and from the SE Freeway, thus taking trucks off the Liberal Party heartland of Portrush Road.

This means that the only viable solution to the SE Freeway dilemma – a truck bypass from Monarto to Port Adelaide (which will be heavily opposed) ain’t going to happen, so the SE Freeway will get much busier and more dangerous.

A quick-thinking truckie avoided peak-hour disaster on the South-Eastern Freeway in May after he was forced to make emergency stop, veering off the freeway and into a pile of gravel near the Heysen Tunnels. Picture: 7 News Adelaide

It’s not the truckies’ fault. They have no other option. The SE Freeway is scary and getting scarier. Car drivers are more aggressive and the speed limits are capricious through the hills.

When the freeway was built there were many more cows in Mount Barker than people. The population of Mount Barker has more than doubled in the last four years to 37,744 and Murray Bridge (the most improved place in SA) now hosts 22,320 souls. More than 45 per cent of Mount Barker residents drive to Adelaide daily to work.

Australia is defined by the tyranny of distance and the tyranny of railway gauges. Federation nearly foundered on railway gauges. The confusion of gauges, pernicious gradients and railway dismantling in the 70s all work against the revival of a train line to Mount Barker.

It is vastly expensive and the train would end up at bloody Keswick.

People go to Mount Barker for a tree change but developers rip out all the trees to accommodate the tree changers.

Meanwhile there are even fewer trees in Mount Barker because they’ve been used to make paper for the endless reports into the transport needs of Mount Barker denizens. Trees need to grow as well as population but otherwise nothing will happen, slowly.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide