reservations

I'm starting to thing the Clem 7 traffic won't flow as smoothly planners would have hoped.

I did another trip this morning north to south, taking the Shafston Ave exit and return. South to north, there were no dramas, but drivers were still going fairly slow. We were doing about 60kmph when the speed limit is 80kmph.

However, the return journey verged on the ridiculous. Taking the Shafston Ave entry, the traffic actually came to a halt BEFORE we had even entered the tunnel. I figured that the problem might be at the merge with the main traffic flow coming from Ipswich Rd / SE Freeway. Not so. From the merge to the actual exit from the tunnel, traffic would have averaged 15kmph, no more. In the short space between the tunnel exit and the Lutwyche Rd traffic lights, the traffic picked up speed and spaced out. There were very few cars ahead of us when we pulled up at the lights. However, the lights stayed on red for a considerable length of time, and I'm sure the traffic would have banked right back to the tunnel exit, if not further by the time we got a green.

So my guess is that the incredibly slow journey north is a combination of people driving slowly in the tunnel (as per the trip south) and the concertina effect you get through traffic lights. People should speed up over time, as they get used to the tunnel, but the impact of those traffic lights would seem to be significant.

If I was paying $4.28 and I had a trip like that, I'd think twice about using the tunnel again.

I'm really starting to think they have a serious problem here.