It is a problem we complain about but our authorities do little to resolve it.

They close off streets, divert traffic into congested streets, widen freeway and bridges, forcing more traffic into city centres causing grid-lock.

I am a town-planner and have read numerous state and government reports on decentralisation. Unfortunately corporate dictates politics and the congestion with the resultant pathetic solutions will only increase and implode.
Many past governments attempted to develop business centres in the outer-regions but we always end up catering to big business and building up the city centres.

It is time that thinking people abandon the city centres for the sewers they are becoming and venture out to the greener perimeter.

Aquarius I worked for 22 years for the NSW DMR,it had been the roads board and during my service became the RTA.
I found it not as bad as others did but management even today is far worse.
During the beginning of Enterprise bargaining I was elected as one of six union delegates to the negotiation team.
Training followed at the level very senior staff received.
Current and past policy is/has been to cut costs in construction/renewal.
This leaves all too ofter roads built for today not tomorrow.
To work on the road, it becomes your factory floor,you see ways to stop delays,just minor spending.
But far too many desk jockeys will not listen.
Just on 4 lane divided roads bringing main steam traffic out to right hand lane before a intersection banked up with stalled traffic helps.
At a traffic prang, ten minutes delay takes and hour to return to normal.
I will watch with interest.

Aquarius we definitely do need to get people's workplaces out of the city, but, as a planner I'm not surprised you can't see through the trees to the wood. After all it is the members of your discipline, & the other bureaucrats, that have caused the fiasco.

The problem in not business, it's government. Get the public servants out of the city, & business will follow. After all the business in the city is based on the number of public servants, with their high pay rates, that draw the retail trade. Then it is the amount of business to be negotiated with government purchasing departments that draw much of the rest. Spread the bureaucrats, & the rest will follow.

If anyone was really interested in equity in the electorate, it would be law that the same percentage of the public sector wage bill be spent in every electorate. After all, why shouldn't the bush see some of it's taxes coming back into their districts, in the form of those nice fat public service pay cheques.

Truth be told the public sector is the biggest & most successful miner in the state. Just it mines every acre in the state for money to drag back to Brisbane, but pays no royalties.

Belly, widening roads to cope with increased volume in one direction is good and well, but if we half the volume by forcing it to travel in the opposite direction the congestion would be reduced by 50%.

Hasbeen, I agree with everything you've said and I've encountered this frequently while working with governments. My experience in Victoria and NSW has been that state governments are trying to de-centralise bureaucracys admittedly at too slow a rate. My intent of this topic is too get as many people concerned to draw state government's attention to the problem.

Far be it for me to pretend I know as much as you do, true.
I know I do not but my thoughts are these.
First in holiday times and peak load the Pacific Highway becomes a car park.
I was part of the move to close overtaking lanes of less than say 2 klms in those times?
Reason? in every holiday period multi fatal road trauma and deaths took place at the end of those lanes.
Parking lots at both ends motorists die, trying to get in front, it works still on remaining single lane roads.
My first post was about intersections that should have had over passes or round abouts again on the Pac.
Two lanes each direction it lets traffic flow freely.
BUT tourist side roads, not widened or serviced well during highway reconstruction are death traps.
And many die there too many.
Traffic just on a normal weekend can bank up twenty cars/trucks long, much more in holidays.
Stranded motorists take risks.
As a natural part of good/defensive driving, I merge to the right lane if clear EVERY TIME at least 200 meters before such intersections.
Most do not, most think my wish is to over take slow moving cars.
It is to share the road show respect I do so.
If we make laws, put a merge right sign there, or mark the road merge,we may improve the flow,we may also create a new problem I am well aware accidents are caused by motorists not road conditions.

Aquarius, what about continuous population growth?

All else being equal, this factor makes it damn near impossible to prevent traffic congestion from worsening (along with all manner of other things).

It dilutes, cancels out or completely overwhelms any efforts made to reduce congestion. And yet it is something that just seems to get left out of the discussion when it comes to town planning.

Town planners have the great tendency to accept continuous population growth with no end in sight as a given, without thinking at all about how the growth rate might be slowed and eventually stopped.

The final size of a town, with a target population, should be a fundamental factor in real town planning. In fact, the absence of this makes a complete mockery of town planning, IMHO.

The debate about urban sprawl versus consolidation here in Perth has arisen again in the West Australian newspaper this week, with George Monbiot labelling this city as one of the most unsustainable in the world in terms of urban sprawl and dependency on the car. But as with previous episodes, there has been no mention of continuous never-ending population growth.

You wrote:

<< It is time that thinking people abandon the city centres for the sewers they are becoming and venture out to the greener perimeter. >>

Well, we should not abandon the city centres, but yes some movement of to smaller centres could be desirable, up to a point.

The formerly small centre of Mandurah south of Perth is now a metropolis with its own congestion problems. And other centres in the southwest with rapid population growth have developed new sets of problems.

It comes right back to the imperative of planning for a reduction in the rate of population growth with limits to growth built in to future plans.

Aquarius, as a town planner, I’d be interested to know what you think of this.