Yeah, Brisbane doesn't need more bridges.....

2 hours, 40 minutes to get home last night.

1 hour, 30 minutes to get home tonight.

And all because of the closure of one bridge.

Brisbane is constantly portrayed as a 'river city', yet it's a city who's planning has done nothing to consider it's supposed dominant geographical feature.  Think of other major cities around the world built on a river - take London for example.  How many points of crossing do you have for the Thames?  A heck of a lot more than 4 in the city centre and two on it's outskirts.

Yet look at Brisbane.  Close the Captain Cook Bridge and what are you left with?

• The Walter Taylor bridge at Indooroopilly- one lane each way and hardly close enough to the City to alleviate the congestion.
• The William Jolly Bridge - two lanes each way and who's southbound exit has been totally destroyed by a combination of the force-feeding of a buy way bridge through a major thoroughfare and the (stupid) desire to transform a former major road into a 'tree-lined boulevard that casual diners can stroll along of an evening'
• The Victoria Bridge - one lane each way - the rest have been strangled by the installation of a express bus way who's constant vomit of vehicles strangles the other bridge next to it.
• The Storey Bridge - an actual decent-sized three lanes each way but which suffers from the onslaught of everyone else being forced onto it.
• The Gateway Bridge - fine if you don't mind paying a toll (as you usually have to) or if you don't mind backtracking for 15-20 minutes to either get to the entrance of the bridge or away from it (incidentally - it took me over 40 minutes to get across this bridge tonight - perhaps further evidence that our road system has been allowed to stagnate for 20-odd years despite a booming population?).

Alot of people give Campbell Newman crap about his obsession with tunnels.  And he does seem to have a certain keenness for them.  But at least it's some kind of solution to a major problem that Brisbane faces.  People aren't going to be forced onto buses by stealing away what roads there already are for special bus only lanes.  The only people who think that are town planners green loons. 

Solving the problem of forcing anyone who wants to cross from the north to the south of this city to travel into the centre of the city would be one step.  But I won't hold my breath to see it happen.  All those poor nimby's vigorously campaigning against the construction of the Hale Street bridge might as well pack up and go home now.  Any argument that they might have made that Brisbane has enough river crossings has just gone up in car fumes.

As an aside, has anyone else ever wondered why something labeled an 'Inner City Bypass' has an exit that puts you virtually in the middle of the inner city it's trying to bypass?