Richard White, East Ballina
Wow! How great is the traffic jam coming into Ballina every morning? I thought I was on Ewingsdale Road!
I suppose the flooding of the well thought out design that is Tamarind Drive and M1 intersection didn’t help, but still this looks like something we will have to get accustomed to while River St is widened.
Interestingly, I noticed the vast majority of cars carried only a driver. I thought if we could persuade commuters to share a ride, and every car carried two people, we’d instantly halve the cars and ease the traffic problem – duh!
Any suggestions? Surely while you are sitting, waiting for the traffic to move, there are various thoughts flowing through your minds.
Here’s a few:
Car pooling – google it, apparently there are 740,198 registered users, not here though!
Blanch’s 640X commuter bus – it’s proven to be as fast as a car and cheaper on a weekly basis. A full bus is equivalent to at least 50 cars!
Hitchhiking points – a few designated areas (like a bus stop scenario) where you patiently wait for a caring person to offer you a lift – even one way. In the afternoon, hitch from a similar spot/s in Ballina and hopefully you’ll get home
Funnily, we are very generous and community minded when catastrophes such as bushfires and floods occur, but blissfully mindless when presented with an easily resolvable problem
So tomorrow whilst sitting, stationary, give it some thought.
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