Sydney’s traffic on a better day. Today it was at the mercy of the chauffeured generation of students (Photo: north approach to Sydney harbour bridge by Lynn Smith - Creative Commons License)
After almost two months of summer house sitting friends places in Dee Why and then Haberfield I am now back at home (possibly temporarily - I’m trying to find a place to move out to at the moment). This week was what I really didn’t want. Not only did I head back home on Monday, the Australia Day public holiday, and thus start a new week commuting once more from North Narrabeen but I also was lucky enough to have this same week coincide with the start of school for New South Wales.
Anyone who travels the city route from the Northern Beaches via public transport knows the problem. Private schools start up again and suddenly every Mosman mother (and the occasional Mosman father) worth their platinum credit card jumps in the car to add to the morning peak hours car park (about 7am-9am will do nicely in the morning) that is Military Road to ensure that their little darling need not bother with that most peasant notion of catching the buses we pay taxes to provide them with.
With the little blighters on holidays the working mob of Sydney enjoyed far faster transport times. Given that the private schools generally go on holidays sometime around late November, early December (showing exceptional value for money with shorter school terms) and public schools generally the week before Christmas, it shows just which group contributes more to the transport gridlock of Sydney. Most of December and all of January has shown Sydney what transport should be like - when we get the soccer (and netball) mums - and dads (after all, there’s a growing band of stay-at-home dad’s looking after the kids in defiance of tradition) - off the road.
So, this morning, instead of the speedy 45-50 minute trip into the city, by the time I hit the Burnt Bridge Deviation leading to the Spit Bridge I was already at the trip time for only part of the journey. Looking down at the myriad of cars that ensure buses cannot move speedily through to the city (unlike their rail counterparts - those of you with rail options quit whining about the “slow speed” of the rail system, it’s better than being on the road in an motor-omnibus) I was amazed at how many of the cars had bodies in school blazers.
Hopefully this is all just a result of the first week’s nerves of new schools and so forth (obviously there’s been a lot of churn amongst students in the school sector judging by the number of teens being chauffeured by their parents) and the parents will ditch the car and put them on a bus instead. If not I hope I’m living far closer to the city as soon as I can - lest I end up needing to bring my sleeping bag on the bus for the doubling and tripling of journey times that inevitably comes from the roads as choked as they are. Till then, the L90 arriving at North Narrabeen at 645am will have to be my morning commute.
Joel, you have my sympathies and full agreement with thia article. I believe that any workplace more than 30mins away from where you live is too far (always best to live as close as possible to one’s work). And school-chauffering mums should give their kids some independence and start them on the path of learning life’s lessons on their own by letting them take public transport and mingling with the rest of the population that inhabits this planet instead of coddling and cushioning them. For what it’s worth, if they really want to coddle and cushion them so much then they should home school them (guaranteeing then that they will definitely turn out weird and socially inept).
…and alleviating some of the traffic woes that Sydney is already haemorrhaging under.
I love the fact that you just blamed all of Sydney’s transport problems on private schools. An inspired leap of logic! I’ll be sure to include this in my book “100 more things to hate about private-school-boys”.h
Joel,
Stephen is wrong. This article, while the sentiment that everyone should work to reduce traffic is perfectly right, the delivery is a load of shit stacked on a deck of cards.
Issues that undermine this article:
1. Use of the word “motor-omnibus” when “bus” will do.
2. When I attended a public school, I was driven to school many more times than when I attended a private school.
3. Reference to kids as “little blighters” when you are 25 years old. This is at least 50 years too early.
4. An apostrophe implies ownership, damnit!
Stupidities aside, you constantly rage about people invoking populist concepts to get their point across. As Stu has highlighted in his typically sarcastic way, this rant is little more than that. Platinum credit cards? Give me a break.
An inspired leap of logic you may wish to think it @stu, more a result of seven years worth of observation of private school terms versus public school terms and experiencing the traffic when there is not an overlap has led me to the conclusion I make. Had the school terms of private schools coincided absolutely with public schools such a conclusion would have been impossible.
Ah @wombat, raw nerve mate?
As for your list of notions that undermine the article:
1. I quite like the word motor-omnibus and figured a rant involving motor-omnibuses would be a perfect platform to use it.
2. Care to expand and tell me if this was for your time at North Sydney Boys or your local primary school? Travel distance impacts as much as travel. Also, might want to be able to say that a *large* proportion of the NSB population were also chauffeured.
3. Come on, we need more words like this entering the vocab!
4. True. I was tired when I put my thoughts down, but that does not excuse it. I have fixed this for you and @stu
Perhaps it might be considered “populist” by you, but with the steady move to private schools I’d say it’s opposite. Had I not been able to pinpoint times over the past seven years of traveling through Mosman on Military Road and into the city when traffic conditions changed with school dates you may have a point. However, observation over extended time on the impact of such school semesters has led me to my conclusion and I stand by it.
Why are you standing by anything at 6.47am on a Saturday morning??
It was actually an hour later - wordpress doesn’t handle multi-location daylight savings too well.
Was heading out for coffee with a friend and househunting in the inner west.
I sail to work upon a magic boat! It takes 35minutes every time and is as relaxing as it is convenient.
I can’t empathise with you at all.
What you all need is some beautiful picturesque scenery to distract and engage your minds. Sun, snow, pine forests, moose and reindeer certainly make my trip to and from work beautiful, leaving me with no thoughts of traffic-jams or traffic-chaos. Of course, I don’t ever really expect a traffic-jam here and I can only appreciate the beauty of the landscape when the sun decides to show its face above the horizon (which there hasn’t been much of lately but summer is coming…)
@The Experience, I like the sound of a ‘magic boat’.
[...] time I realised once again, after twelve months away from the city transport routes, just how bad traveling from the Northern Beaches through Mosman to the city each day is. Housesitting for both Seb at Dee Why in the lead up to New Years while he was visiting [...]