That’s pretty much what I did today: Worked on the next batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips.
I started with the photography first thing in the morning after breakfast. That took me up to close to lunch time, when I took a break to go out for a walk and get a tandoori chicken pie for lunch. After lunch I started work on assembling the comics in Photoshop. I’m about halfway through that task.
I did take another break to take Scully to the park for some exercise and play with other dogs. While there I noticed some construction/drilling work being done at two sites in the dog park. The regulars told me that this was the beginning of exploratory drilling for construction of the new Western Harbour Tunnel road project, which was approved just a few weeks ago.
The new harbour tunnel will pass directly below the dog park, and there’ll be construction sites and stuff interfering with the park for the next six years. We may even lose part of the dog park permanently – that’s not clear yet.
The annoying thing is that Sydney’s road infrastructure is being expanded at a rapid rate in a misguided effort to “reduce congestion” – when adding roads merely induces demand to the point where congestion is just as bad as before. All the city planners and traffic planners know this, but the NSW Government keeps building more roads anyway, because the drivers/voters demand it. Ugh.
New content today:
because building public transportation is not cost-effective to the government.
I live in a place where the tax on gas and cars is worth more than either of them on their own (seriously – over 50% taxes on those) – so to reduce the number of cars on the road would cost the government money. Public transport also needs to be subsidised to be popular, and all in all – cost more money to run.
The fact that traffic jams and air polution cost more in the long run (not to mention car accidents – I saw a calculation once on how much certain types of injuries cost – turns out if you fix a Red Road, you save more money on healthcare than it costs to fix the road) – doesn’t enter into their minds.
Shame.