Driving in Melbourne - WTF?

[6LSSVE]

I regularly travel East/West and these days it takes me well over 2 hours to reach my place of work each way.
Note: I don't get paid for travel time so I have to drag my sorry arse out of bed at 4:30AM to compensate for crap traffic flow.
To add insult to injury, I pay Transurban a small fortune in toll charges for the privilege of doing sub-twenty Kms per hour on their crap Tollways.
To add fester to injury, our state gumbymint wasted 1.5 BILLION of our dollars to cancel the VERY much needed East-West Link to get the Greeny preference votes in order to gain power.
This is costing us workers, motorists and ultimately the economy a huge fortune.
So where is our compensation for travel time lost due to piss-poor infrastructure due to crap political allegiance?
I made over 3000 gear shifts today on my way home over a distance of 150 Kms.
Where is my compensation for vehicular wear & tear through no fault of my own?
I believe that at the very least, tolls should be waived if traffic flow is sub-standard.
I mean, why should we pay if the "service" supplied is crap for anything?
They made damn sure you pay for every leg of your journey.

 

[gopher]

I had the misfortune of having to drive through Melbourne at Christmas time when we drove from Queensland to Tasmania towing a caravan
Melbourne was the only place we had any difficulty navigating and the drivers seem to be the rudest and most incompetent arseholes anywhere on the eastern side of Australia
More than 6000ks of travel and the worst part of the whole journey was that short stint through Melbourne
Both ways

 

[sleepa]

And this is one of the main reasons I moved from Melbourne to Brisbane.
Bad traffic up here is a nothing compared to what Melbourne is like.

And a tip on driving in Melbourne. Just act like you own the road or you won't make it anywhere....

 

[strgas]

yep good enough reason to leave melb behind and moved to the bush used to travel 22 kms to go to work could take 45mins in the moring and over an hour to get home Cranbourne to Keysborough even with taking back roads and short cuts , freakston dandchong road was a prick at the best of times get across on either greens rd or abbots road what a joke . now travel 35 kms to work and cover this distance in 25 30 mins , just have to watchout for skippy and slow mo framer joe and his sheep or loose cattle and the odd crazy cyclist or two .
hate travelling back to melb now and it only looks good in the rear view mirror now .

 

[gopher]

And a tip on driving in Melbourne. Just act like you own the road or you won't make it anywhere....

I learnt that one pretty quickly

 

[VS 5.0]

yep good enough reason to leave melb behind and moved to the bush used to travel 22 kms to go to work could take 45mins in the moring and over an hour to get home Cranbourne to Keysborough even with taking back roads and short cuts , freakston dandchong road was a prick at the best of times get across on either greens rd or abbots road what a joke . now travel 35 kms to work and cover this distance in 25 30 mins , just have to watchout for skippy and slow mo framer joe and his sheep or loose cattle and the odd crazy cyclist or two .
hate travelling back to melb now and it only looks good in the rear view mirror now .

Melbourne looked good in my rear view mirror in 1987.

 

[Mike Litherous]

Traveling here sucks in peak hour. Perhaps that we have the strictest rules and the tightest fine threshold that out drivers now don't know how to flow in traffic as they are too busy watching their speedo.

The tighter the regulations the dumber driver it breeds. With the unhealthy reliance on revenue from the fines we will have a generation of dumb drivers and probably end up with more road deaths per capita of anywhere in Australia.

I drive occasionally on the country freeways and they are a recipie to fall asleep. Cruise control at 100 or 110 in a modern car were you should be driving at 130.

Speed kills. Yes it sure does by a lack of speed puts you to sleep.

 

[Calaber]

Seems funny to read you guys complaining about Melbourne's traffic problems. I always thought Sydney was the most congested and ill-disciplined city for traffic.

At least down there you have freeways that start and end somewhere, even if they are congested. Most of Sydney's freeways were built during the 1980's and bring you two thirds of the way into the city, then dump you on ancient suburban street networks to complete your journey. It's only now that the government is doing something to connect them all as they should have been from the start.

And when we spend 1.5 billion on freeways, it's to actually build them, not cancel them.:doh:

 

[Drawnnite]

I have found it funny reading the papers about people taking so long to get from a to b, and when you look at where they are going public transport would be such a better option for them, even if at times it in itself is poor. (as a tradesperson myself I do understand some people cannot have that option though)
invest better money into a much better system and you could get soo many vehicles off the roads.

the major problem with traffic is that so much work is centred in 1 major area, and all starts at the same time. add that to the fact that if you do drive so many muppets obtained their licences from a weetbix box you can see that trouble is going to happen.

Would also be better if people could learn to drive properly though. Definitely is infuriating when thanks to 1 idiot everyone has to suffer.

Used to travel a lot across town or into melbourne for work. used to just leave early and get there early, sit down and have a coffee and read the paper.
much better then trying to get there with 2 minutes to spare.
no stress that way.
or just used to start early to finish early.

 

[Darcon666]

Have lived in all the major cities(Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth...) and to tell you, I think Sydney has it down pat as the worse. :cry:

Where one(1) accident on the M7, against the traffic flow(out of the city...), can and has caused major delays on M1, M2, M4 & M5 and impact on all the surrounding suburban roads as well.

Example:-
East/West, just to go 11km from the CBD to Parramatta on a normal day can take 20-30min, heaven help you if there is an accident or road works on the M4.
North/South-Hornsby to Campbelltown/Engadine, some 40-45km will take 1-1.5hrs on a good day and +3hrs on a bad - Like WTF?