Conflicting views of what is progress

[OPINION]: PROGRESS always has a price.

PROGRESS always has a price.

In the case of the Alstonville bypass and most other road projects, the price is the acquisition and destruction of everything that stands in the way of the new road.

In its role as the government agency which oversees these projects, the Roads and Traffic Authority is in an unenviable position.

Motorists demand newer, safer roads to drive on. Communities want traffic taken out of their villages.

The Alstonville bypass, in particular, is a project which is on the drawing board largely because of people power.

The RTA can be praised for responding to these pressures in one breath, and criticised for ploughing through farmland and forests in the next.

The engineers are charged with the task of drawing up a road that follows the most direct route with the least impact possible – with priority skewed to human wants and needs.

Readers interviewed about the destruction of trees at Wollongbar all said the loss was too great a price to pay, yet they felt the bypass was important too.

A similar conundrum is currently brewing in Bangalow. The option of a southern bypass will take more traffic out of the village but the price to be paid will be a new road running across what is currently peaceful farmland nestled in the flood plain of Byron Creek.

You could argue such progress makes human lives more amenable and is simply the way of the world.

But try telling that to the spider or bird living in the top of an ancient fig tree at Wollongbar. By the end of this week their home will be wood chips while the new road is one step closer to completion.

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RTA doesn't give a fig for tree

Originally published as Conflicting views of what is progress