Your Views

Spit Bridge backup plan sadly lacking
I CANNOT believe that the minister seriously thinks that removing the 7.30pm opening of the Spit Bridge will in any way improve its breakdown record.
Surely a better way to deal with a known weakness in the mechanicals would be to ensure a reliable backup to the electric system.
When the bridge was built in the 1950s it had a diesel backup as electricity supplies were not reliable.
Is there still a diesel backup? If not, why not? And if there is, did it also fail?
When the electrician was called, were special arrangements made for police escort to get him through the gridlocked traffic?
Obviously not or the problem would have been fixed in 30 minutes.
This is just another example of the RTA Minister blustering to cover up the fact that there is a known weakness and his RTA bureaucrats have failed to develop a management plan to deal with breakdowns.
All those unfortunate souls who were delayed last week should start a group legal action for damages resulting from the additional time that was lost as a result of yet another major RTA failure of due diligence and duty of care by not having in place an effective breakdown management plan.
Jim Reid
Mosman

Awful lack of co-ordination
I WAS one of the unfortunates who decided, against my will, to leave the office a little later, only to be stuck in solid traffic from before Spit Junction on Military Rd.
It was about 8.45pm, and unusually busy.
There had been roadworks along this part recently, but the delay was beyond Awaba St.
Being local and clever, we cut through the back of Beauty Point on to Medusa St then down Parriwi Rd to the lights at the bottom near the Middle Harbour Club.
It was only then that a solitary policeman turned us around.
There had been no pre-warning, no police, nothing until we had endured the traffic queues for about half an hour.
Others who had not weaved their way down to the Spit would have waited longer.
Why was a diversion not set up?
Simon Tebbutt
Seaforth

Pathetic responseto an emergency
WE Australians pride ourselves on being practical.
Faced with the Spit Bridge crisis on June 23, the police or RTA could have used a Polair chopper to drop an emergency electrician onto the football park adjacent to the bridge on the Mosman side.
The power problem could then have been tackled quickly.
This bungle is an indictment of our government's ability to cope with a crisis on such an arterial road arising from a major traffic accident or even a terrorist event.
Ministers Roozendaal, Watkins and their department heads should hang their heads in shame.
David Grinston
Cremorne

Council blind to bushfire threat
HAVING first-hand knowledge of a bushfire in North Sydney, I fail to understand why some councillors, including the Mayor and Cr Zimmerman, appear to believe that this local government area is not bushfire prone.
When, in the mid-1990s, huge fires raged all around Sydney, council was inundated with demands by residents to chop down trees in areas where the residents perceived a threat.
And it was after that series of fires that serious attention began to be paid to determining bushfire-prone areas and developing building standards to prevent as much as possible the destruction of threatened homes. It seems it is time that North Sydney caught up with this process. We know that with the drier and drier weather conditions now being experienced fuel loads in bushland and open space areas are increasing, so the risk of fire is also increasing. Low-level hazard reduction, with its attendant smoke hazard, is not a final or practicable solution.
A considerable number of very expensive residences in North Sydney and neighbouring local government areas are built on heights above declared bushland and open space areas where, if a fire was started at a lower level it would inevitably, under hot, dry and windy conditions, roar like the proverbial express train up the slope in a matter of seconds.
In the mid-1970s a fire started at the rear of the then-Stannard's boat yard on Berry's Bay roared up the hillside through the scrub, jumped the railway line and came very, very close to setting fire to residences in Dumbarton Street.
In my flat, ash  fortunately not burning cinders  had been sucked into the front room.
Shirley Colless
North Sydney

Seeking solution to bridge problem
IT seems to me that there are two things wrong with the Spit Bridge, other than its connection to the invariably congested Spit Road/Military Rd thoroughfare. Firstly, the bridge is too narrow so the three lane/one lane arrangement operating in peak hour will always cause problems for traffic in one direction.
The second is simply that it's a low-level bridge and, regardless of how well the opening and closing mechanism works, traffic flow will inevitably be impeded.
So, is a tunnel the answer? Maybe, but did anyone on the peninsula hear of the chaos caused by the closure of the M5 tunnel last week after a computer failure?
No road is immune from problems and if you've ever been held up for hours in a tunnel you soon realise that being stuck above ground is far preferable, especially if there's a nice view.
The obvious alternative is a high-level, six-lane bridge like the Roseville Bridge, but will the residents of Clontarf, Seaforth and Mosman countenance that?
Intruding on water views is the deadliest of sins in some areas and one could imagine a battle royal over such a suggestion.
Few would deny that the present government has been neglectful and, quite possibly, deceitful, but can Mr Baird, who campaigned against the widening of the bridge, promise that a Liberal government will solve the problem? Perhaps we'll just have to wait until petrol costs $5 a litre and it might rectify itself.
Tony Dawson
Newport Beach