If only we’d had a visionary like Paul Jones last century, to suggest a roundabout for Clifford Street! Wait, there was?
This is not just another intersection on the Coast Road. Councillors over three decades have launched grand plans for land acquisition – seemingly minus sustained dedication to fiscal and administrative follow-up. Two previous hard-earned grants for roundabouts lie fallow (2005, 2014) along with countless other fruitless resolutions and reversals. And here we are again!
Leave loftier visions momentarily to picture this scenario: a coroner is examining a fatal injury at a black spot where the community has lobbied for solutions for 30 years. Countless proposals, mirroring this latest one, have already failed. Despite this, and ignoring expert advice, the relevant road authority (Council), rejected the funding awarded for an evidence-based, effective safety upgrade. With no fresh ideas for an alternative!
How impressed will her/his honour be with an explanation that traffic lights didn’t gel with the lifestyle/tourism/NIMFY/fanariphobic vision of a certain, select element of Byron Shire? Would the ‘lifestyle’ influencers give it a second thought?
The dangerous precedent here Paul, is the cavalier and cravenly populist stupidity that abandoned civic responsibility.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
