Selling Sydney By The Pound
Oct. 9th, 2020 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanOn a much more local note than the previous entry from all over New South Wales... I don't know what the State Minister for Transport, Andrew Constance, has against the Northern Beaches area of Sydney, but today he's not only axed my local bus route into the city, but is now also getting rid of the large ferry service from Circular Quay to Manly - a service that has been running for over 100 years. He apparently wants to replace them with smaller vessels, which will not only require yet another re-design & renovation of Manly Wharf (well, it's almost been 5 years since the last one, so why not?!?), but also reduce carrying capacity, leading to overcrowding on the boats in these supposedly socially-distanced times & even worse when everything goes back to 'normal' & the ferries carry thousands of people to the Beaches every weekend. Now they'll clog up the only road north even more than it already is most of the time
Apparently, the large ferries are expensive to maintain. Well, I wasn't aware the State Government was so strapped for cash, given how it knocked down a perfectly serviceable stadium to build a replacement that won't be appreciably any better or bigger than the one in the rubble, or sold off the State's electricity infrastructure for millions of dollars, because it's not the Government's job to actually run & maintain services... it's their job to run a giant auction clearance house, where all the stuff we taxpayers have paid for the creation of over the decades can be sold off to private companies, who then charge us ever-increasing fees to use what we used to own...
I never thought I was such a Socialist, but I seem to be bucking the middle-aged white-guy trend & becoming even more of one as I get older
Back to the ferries - not everything about a liveable city is about efficiency & economics... it's about a city's image, character... personality even. The ferries are as much a part of Sydney Harbour as the Bridge & the Opera House & I don't see a push to knock either of those down to replace them with something smaller & more cost-effective...
Yet
Apparently, the large ferries are expensive to maintain. Well, I wasn't aware the State Government was so strapped for cash, given how it knocked down a perfectly serviceable stadium to build a replacement that won't be appreciably any better or bigger than the one in the rubble, or sold off the State's electricity infrastructure for millions of dollars, because it's not the Government's job to actually run & maintain services... it's their job to run a giant auction clearance house, where all the stuff we taxpayers have paid for the creation of over the decades can be sold off to private companies, who then charge us ever-increasing fees to use what we used to own...
I never thought I was such a Socialist, but I seem to be bucking the middle-aged white-guy trend & becoming even more of one as I get older
Back to the ferries - not everything about a liveable city is about efficiency & economics... it's about a city's image, character... personality even. The ferries are as much a part of Sydney Harbour as the Bridge & the Opera House & I don't see a push to knock either of those down to replace them with something smaller & more cost-effective...
Yet
