67
‘Something doesn’t add up’: the small Queensland town united in its fight against speed camera fines
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Despite the example you gave - almost none of those fines would have been locals.
It's a major interstate route and people travelling through the town are the ones that get fined - in other parts of the state the speed limit for that road would be far higher (probably 110kph with a bypass for the town) and wouldn't be enforced as heavily either.
I thought about that, but the fact is that the way the article presents it gives us no reason to believe that's the case.
If it were a major interstate route, it would have a name, instead of being called Small Town-Smaller Town Rd (Atherton-Malanda Rd). It also wouldn’t be 250km north of the last major route to the NT (Flinders Hwy) or 20km west of the road to Cairns (Bruce Hwy). Your claim is completely untrue.
It's effectively part of Highway 1 - which goes around the coast through every coastal city on mainland Australia.
It's not officially part of it, but west of Cairns a bridge has been closed to a lot of traffic for three years. Most people don't expect the bridge to be repaired, more likely they'll move the highway... but preliminary investigations have been suppressed (not a good sign) and nearly $10m is being spent just on planning to decide what to do - the results of that planning effort are scheduled to be released by the end of next year - who knows when construction will start. In the mean time, Atherton-Malanda Rd is one of the detour options, depending where you're going along Highway 1.
It's also a major tourist road - about half a million tourists per year drive along it.
You're right, it's not a major highway. But it is and always has been used for heavy freight and more than ever since the bridge is a mess. It was originally built well over a hundred years ago to haul massive old growth rainforest tree trunks to be shipped off to Europe - I'm talking trees where a single log would need an oversize truck to move it by modern standards. These days the road is depended on by local farmers and it's almost a blessing that it's not a federal highway, because being a local road means it's actually considered a priority by the government that maintains it.