Wild wild weather

We've had some pretty heavy weather here in Brisbane lately. Over two days this past week my part of town had something like 400mm of rain. It's a bit odd to get rain in Brisbane this time of the year. Mostly summer is wet and winter is dry. The May average rainfall for Brisbane (at the airport) is something like 100mm and the annual average only 1200!

Some suburbs were really badly hit. In my part of town Ithaca Creek broke its banks in a few places and a whole suburb (St Johns Wood) was isolated.

My place wasn't much affected. The downstairs rooms got water running through them (they're below ground level on one side), the gravel from the driveway got washed across the back yard and there is a large hole in the back ground next to the far side fence where the ground has subsided.

My main grump is that my bike route to work is along a linear park alongside Enoggera Creek. Half of it is covered in mud and the floodway creek crossings won't be passable for weeks. Some of the timber bridges that were damaged in last November's storms might be washed away totally. I don't know yet.

The rain did have a good side. The drought is now officially over, and the dam levels went from a respectable 60% to a good 73% over this week.

Best mass transit solution for the Sunshine Coast

In the run up to last week's state election, there was a lot of talk about the best use of the CAMCOS corridor that runs between Beerwah (on the north coast rail line out of Brisbane) and Maroochydore Airport (via Caloundra West, Kawana Waters and Maroochydore). This line has been reserved for an extention of the QR Brisbane Citytrain network.

The Liberal National Candidates suggested the line should be brought forward between Caloundra and Maroochydore and possibly built as light rail.

There is a lot of angst about this project, partly because it is seen as a line that will simply suck life out of the Sunshine Coast and turn the Coast into dormitory suburbs for Brisbane. The fact that the line is designed as a QR interurban line with wide station spacing adds to the conception that it won't be any good for intracoastal trips. On the other hand, the Coast faces a serious shortage of employment and this means that easy access to the Brisbane metropolitan area employment base will be increasingly important. At the same time, I believe it is essential that business links between Brisbane and the coast are strengthened. It should be possible for businesses to locate in Maroochydore knowing that Brisbane is only a 90 minute train ride away (for visitors and clients).

I have come to the conclusion that one good way forward is to build the line, as proposed, to QR suburban standards, while at the same time negotiating a Karlsruhe-type solution for intracoastal trips. The Karlsruhe model is one where light rail vehicles are able to share tracks with regular suburban trains. These LRT vehicles can then travel in street medians and make more frequent stops than the suburban/interurban trains which provide longer distance travel.

It will be tricky, particularly getting QR on side, but I believe it is worth investigating further.

Raining

My new rainwater tank, installed just before Christmas, is now full and overflowing. I've connected the pump and it seems to have enough pressure to fill the upstairs loo. Hurrah!

I think I now need to go and sprinkle some fertilizer on the lawn. How decandent.

The cost of infrastructure provision

There has been a lot in the media lately (e.g. The Age, Jan 26) about housing affordability in Australia, and lack thereof. There are lots of reasons for this, and I haven't done the research to come to a firm opinion myself.

However, in the course of work I have come across something called the "IPA" (Integrated Planning Act, 1997) under which Queensland local governments levy infrastructure charges on developers to cover the cost of infrastructure.

In other words, if you are a developer wishing to create a suburban subdivision, say on the outskirts of Brisbane, you will need to come up with the money to, inter alia:

* build the necessary local streets
* upgrade any regional roads that are affected by the new subdivision
* build or upgrade sewers, local and regional
* build or upgrade stormwater drains, retarding basins and associated works
* build local parks
* build footpaths

Now this money has to come from somewhere, and the upshot that that potentially tens of thousands of dollars is added to the cost of each suburban house block for essential infrastructure costs.

I'm not naive and I know that money has to come from somewhere. Nonetheless, I do wonder if this is the most equitable way of providing infrastructure. I can't help feel that regional infrastructure (such as main roads and trunk sewers) should be funded by the community as a whole. I am sure - though I'm willing to be proved wrong - that this is how the extensive suburban development of the 50s through to the 90s was funded.

Weather version of Murphy's law

I had a large (5000L) rainwater take installed and plumbed during the week. I am looking forward to being able to water a (small) lawn again, and being able to water vege patch without treking up and down the garden with a watering can.

The weather seems to have returned to the pattern of 'rain 5 days from now' - the 5 days away never actually arrive.

Is there a version of Murphy's Law in operation here? Plenty of rain - until you try and catch it!

Now is the time to plan for the future

So the overheated economy has come off the boil. In fact, it's probably boiled over and put out the gas.

That will take a lot of pressure off Australia's infrastructure. The transport system in particular has been creaking at the seams lately under incredible patronage growth, and there has been a huge rush to 'do something' about it. Sydney has invented and dropped more metro schemes than you can shake a stick at. Melbourne has the Eddington 'plan'. Brisbane has 14 billion dollars' worth of rail tunnels on the agenda. You get the picture.

In my mind the economic downturn, combined with lower petrol prices, now gives us the opportunity to take a breath and start to plan properly again for the future. We can start to ask some serious questions: how much growth are we really likely to see over the coming decade? where will it be? where do we want it to be? what form will it take?

Last time there was a serious economic downturn in Victoria (in the early 90s following the collapse of Pyramid and Tricontinental), Melbourne got remade. It was changed from a run-down manufacturing city to a city of culture, entertainment and shopping. Unfortunately at the same time the road lobby managed to change the city into a freeway city, with hundreds of kilometres of freeway construction undertaken.

Maybe this time we'll be able to take the time to think and do it right. So that next time there's a boom we won't be caught out again.

Just briefly

The worst storm in decades *was* pretty fierce. Driving through it with 10m visibility and debris over the road was, um, interesting. If we'd known at the time how bad it was we probably wouldn't have set out.

The worst hit areas are only a few km from where we live and we didn't even lose power. Lucky.

It's hardly stopped raining since. Pity the order for a rainwater tank is still sitting on the kitchen table :-(