March 16th 2007
Brisbane- Country town posing as metroplis
Imagine a road network in a very hilly area, (eg West Vancouver plus Alberta foothills times ten). Build all your major roads/arteries only running along ridges. Then if you turn right or left, you must plunge downhill. Build all your housing in West Van circular one way-in style. Also it ruins the game if you put up any decent road signs. I got lost regularly 1/2 block after leaving the house.
 If the local rugby team ( similar rabid fans as the Canucks) have a game in their small 50 000 person stadium, the entire town is gridlocked in and out for 4-5 hrs prior to kickoff.  They neglected to build any way around the major stadiums. It’s based on the national Aussie practise of making sure all traffic passes through the town before getting back on their version of an expressway. You want to extract the full dollar value from every traveller through.
What is an expressway? Beats me. they look like local roads where you travel 120 Km. Entrance ramps look like short driveways into a suburban house lot. Couple that with drive -through liquor stores 24/7 and its a bit dicey to drive! But all the restaurants outside of big centers are done by 8 PM. Its like Victoria 20 years ago!
Its still a really good town to do business. I got full roi on this trip on my second day.
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Category: Travel
One Response to: “Brisbane- Country town posing as metroplis”
I think this is slowly chaging with the highways / freeways that once passed through town now being diverted. As infered Victoria has now bypassed many small towns that were once on the highways (many have now effectively died from the loss of business) and the border town of Albury Wodonga has just completed a bypass of the city and of course there is now a massive bypass around Sydney. There is hope for Brisbane yet!