Look to sister city
LAUNCESTON'S councillors would do well to visit Napa, California the sister city of Launceston. Not only for a well established wine industry but also for a near total lack of traffic congestion. Napa residents can avoid traffic hotspots with emails and advisory messages from police, fire and ambulance.
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California allows the equivalent of left turn on red lights. Minor intersections have stop signs instead of traffic lights and dedicated FM traffic radio broadcasts are common. The US has major freeway networks with emergency and car-pooling lanes for two or more people.
Uber and Lift are cheap while public transport is largely impractical except for major cities, airports and shopping centres. While Hobart's inner city traffic congestion increases it's only a matter of time before Launceston faces a similar fate. Sister cities provide a wealth of business ideas and solutions but to date my contacts with Launceston council have been fruitless.
Paul Schlter, Trevallyn.
Eastern bypass
LAUNCESTON'S eastern bypass has been shelved for many decades, and today it should be seriously looked at with new eyes. Our poor city is being suffocated by traffic immobilisation on all direction points clearly showing the inadequate planning of the past now biting hard at the struggling commuters facing delays and frustrations that are common place today.
The Lake Batman plan, put forward a couple of decades ago, looked at all these major issues facing Launceston at that time.
An ongoing development plan, which includes the eastern bypass but very much more, this suggested discussion paper and plan covered traffic flow to and from the west to east Tamar and the total bypass of the city. Using this lost idea of an eastern bypass, a vital river crossing placed atop of a special barrage to retain only constant level fresh water within the city limits and best of all the bypass of the troublesome North Esk to Stephenson's Bend directly to the northern side of the Tamar Barrage's flood gates, eliminating all flood risks to Invermay/Inveresk.
This discussion idea initially met with good response shown to thinking people, but the boffins really could not understand that the Lake Batman Plan was put forward as an ongoing future operation that could have transformed Launceston today. Or at least be on the road to do so rather than fiddling with the streets in the city centre and spending ratepayer funds to create a playground on the banks of a putrid Tamar sewer and sludge tank.