Belly, I well know that NSW and Queensland has unacceptable road design practices having spent many years holidaying in coastal areas.
Australia has very bad driver education and licensing practices. I know 90 year olds who had a renewal of their driver's licenses for another ten years. In my case we had to take the car away from my mother-in-law.

Unless the licensing practice and road design is unified and controlled federally and followed standards similar to the US we will continue to have problems.

Ludwig, unfortunately we in Australia tend to ignore the advice of many brilliant planning proposals. I believe it's the attitude of -
"we've always done it that way." People don't like changing established practices and developers are given a free reign.
It would be ideal to follow the historically established practice in
Europe of villages, small towns, linked by efficient transport and surrounded by green pastures. Planners have attempted to introduce this in Australia with no success. Inevitably developers take over and villages and towns merge. As for population growth I doubt whether we'll ever be able to control it unless major economic or natural disasters interfere.

Dear Aquarius,

People go where the jobs are and Ludwig is right - move the public service jobs out of the city and you may have people willing to
live and work outside the CBD. Retail outlets will follow the people.
Also there should be stricter control on inner city devlopment.
Is it really necessary to have so many high-rise apartment buildings
in the city? Why are they allowed to grow and expand at such a fast rate? Better planning and city development should be encouraged by
local and state governments. Traffic conjestion is a serious problem
and more people, more development certainly is not the answer.

BTW - when are they going to build another bridge instead of the
Westgate - whose carrying capacity is well past its "use-by" date.
That's a major accident waiting to happen. Making extra lanes is no answer - as I said - it carries more than it was built to do.

I can only speak about my work life and training I got in traffic management.
On the RTA and in private road construction traffic movement plans are the work first of front line managers, for a time me.
The right to occupi road, stop traffic/work on it has one priority keep the traffic moving.
Bad roads good roads it will never be easy to plan a road for now or the future that is perfect.
I can say with certainty improvements can be made with existing roads, if in the hands of the right people.
That often is those on the factory floor, the front line road workers.
I worked on the NSW Pacific Highway Death strip [news papers branded it rightly that]
We had many too many 24 hours plus diversions, far too many deaths.
Innovation made each incident run just a little better.
Fires floods fatals,saw diversions planned in advance, action plans implemented in an hour not 4 or 5.
While my highway side entry issue may seem small, the real impact is this.
Those needlessly queuing cars.stalled on the side road,get impatient, act badly and die or kill for it.
I want to tell about impacts, a 24 closure deaths and poison spill at truck smash.
My instructions on setting up a diversion? let no truck over ten tonnes go, stop park them all,the Church will serve food and drinks.
The diversion was 108klm.
It had timber bridges with load limits of ten tonnes.
12 hours in to my shift, my team was there for the full 24 police forced me to let trucks go via that route.
Damage to timber bridges over 1 million dollars and truck roll over blocked that by pass for? 24hours.
Traffic management is not easy.

I think that we worry too much about traffic congestion. Peak oil and adaptation to AGW will mean that cars will become relatively far more expensive to run, to the point that the net number of cars and trucks will begin to decline in the not too distant future. I can't see traffic jams of electric vehicles at their current cost.

Bring on Peak Oil!

<< As for population growth I doubt whether we'll ever be able to control it unless major economic or natural disasters interfere. >>

Aquarius, I’m not meaning to get offside with you, just wanting a friendly discussion, but I’ve got to say that it is precisely this that really bothers me about planners, and has done for many years.

I’m talking about the dismissal of the continuous growth factor, or the total acceptance that growth will just continue and the belief that it can’t be dealt with or that it is not a planner’s business to be concerned about it.

It is just so fundamental to planning to know or at least have some idea of growth rates and final population sizes for the places in question.

Not only this, but to plan for or around an ever-growing population is to actually facilitate this growth which leads to ever more pressure on our roads, on all manner of other infrastructure, services, resources, environment and quality of life.

I’ve got to say it straight: I really don't like planners who plan for and therefore facilitate this ever-increasing pressure on us all.

We need to plan for sustainable societies. Never-ending growth is diametrically opposed to this.

Build another road and watch them come, build another road and watch them come, build another...