The Idiot Parade

by Alex Rieneck

According to the touts, Sydney became a "world city" with the arrival of the 2000 Olympics. No-one has ever been exactly sure what the requirements for being a "world city" are but once the advertising copy got written nobody really bothered. After all, Sydney had the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge and "one of the most beautiful harbours in the world". What else did it need? How about a reality check?

Look at the picture to the right. It is an image of George Street at Railway Square looking North towards the Town Hall. Heading South towards the camera are the cars and taxis of people on their way home after their Saturday night out. In the other direction the traffic is in gridlock. If you examine the image closely you can see brake lights until the vanishing point of somewhere South of the cinema strip. If you are a Sydneysider you know that the truth is much, much, worse.

The traffic is like that as far as The Rocks area on the far side of Circular Quay, a three kilometre long gridlock of cars heading into a dead end for no purpose, and without rational reason. The cars move at a snails pace up George Street through the heart of the city, blocking all normal traffic. They spurn side streets and stay on the main strip. When they get as far North as they can go, they loop back at Miller's Point and head South before they can turn again and head back up George Street.

The problem is so bad that the Police and City Council have taken to closing all of the roads into the Rocks on Friday and Saturday night. About Six PM the barriers go up and the areas become closed to all but residential traffic. The streets around Miller's Point are heavily policed, but the main central drag of George Street is a four lane gridlock for well over two straight kilometres in both directions for upwards of four hours straight. In fact, the traffic late on Saturday night is far, far worse than the traffic at any other time of the week, at any time of day.

The thing is, during the week, people know to leave the car at home and to take the bus or the train into town. On the weekend they bring the car. On purpose. You see all of the cars in the picture are filled with teenagers. The cars are all cruising. Well, they would be cruising if they were moving. As it is they are just about stationary, and, more than likely they are blowing their horns while chugging away at one buck fifty a litre. Most of the cars have more plastic on them than a planeload of merchant bankers and most of the cars look sillier than the Batmobile(c). That doesn't bother their owners though. In fact, if you were to tell one of them that their cars looked like the Batmobile(c) they would probably be flattered.

Yes. They are that stupid.

And it is bad and, the tourists don't like it. Not the people in the motionless plastic cars. The real tourists. The ones from overseas who pay money to come and see Sydney. They are not happy and they have complained.

The problem is that Sydney has the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge... and not much else. Sydney is not packed to the walls with history like any European city. It does not, for example, have the vast supporting business infrastructure of an Asian city or the grounding financial or business of a US city. As tourist destinations go, Sydney's attractions are thin on the ground and the city has no "real world" backing to it should the business of fleecing tourists dry up. The Saturday night car cruise is offending the tourists and the idiots simply have to go.

I recommend teams of council officers who can defect cars. They can simply walk up George Street on Saturday Night passing out "Defect" stickers. Or they can start charging to drive you car into the city. Say five bucks a day during business hours. And 90 bucks for Saturday night, but you vehicle has to pass over the pits to get in. The Pit check costs 80 dollars.

Hell, I can still dream can't I? It's getting to be the only thing a person with any common sense can do nowadays.

And it is about time that the world's petrol supply really does become un-affordably expensive and then dry up like the experts keep promising that it will because then, finally, the car owners will stop being able to breed and will die out as a species in the wild with only a few of them surviving in nature parks. They could be cared for by keepers. And for the tourists, they could drive in circles around the park and now and then, they could honk mournfully for glories past.

In the meantime, I think we should harvest them for pet food.