Feel the rhythm

IN a city where people are used to being 20 minutes from anywhere, a bit of traffic congestion can really get the blood boiling.

Right now a series of coincidental developments in the city are doing just that to some in the business community.

But the road works in the city centre, along with some other major construction projects, are temporary and ought not be mistaken for what they are designed to achieve.

I regularly drive into the city and I have found it increasingly accessible, again, over the past two years as small changes have been made. Even in peak hour, with the current road works in full swing, I have found delays minimal.

For too long the city was a throughway for traffic, with one-way, multilane streets designed to move cars like a freeway through a canyon. It is the CBD equivalent to the modern sports stadium, designed to inject and extract people with greatest haste – a functional yet soulless design.

This thinking is outdated and the City of Perth is rightly returning the natural flow of cars to the city streets, especially to St Georges Terrace.

It is regrettable that the tragic demolition of Perth’s architecture cannot be similarly restored. Sometimes you just have to move on.

It is worth noting that Perth isn’t saying ‘no’ to cars; it is just offering more space for people to spill out onto the streets. Hopefully that is not just for the pedestrian version of rush hour.

Wider pavements and slower traffic should invite more activity such as outdoor eating and, heaven forbid, a little overflow from our new pubs and bars.

None of this is perfect, but it’s unrealistic to expect it to be.

Perth is not an ancient European capital and no amount of single lanes or right hand turns will make it so.

For some it may slow the journey to and from work; by merely a few minutes, though, it has to be said.

Nevertheless, time is money, so it will come at a cost.

But there have been plenty of business leaders calling for changes to way our city works. They are the ones who want the skilled and the qualified to come here – the people they want can choose where to live.

It will take more than tweaking the road system to achieve that but a lot of other hard work has already been done in terms of deregulating to liquor licensing and retail trading hours – and we all know the level of resistance those changes faced at every turn.

The rhythm of the city is shifting. After this disruptive period we can only hope the vision for a friendlier and more hospitable city centre becomes the reality.