Olympian cost of $86m for Youth Day
NSW taxpayers will fork out $86 million to host the upcoming Sydney visit of Pope Benedict XVI, and World Youth Day (actually a week-long event - go figure).
Here’s what we get for our money though…
Widespread disruptions for motorists, with the Harbour Bridge closed for 12 hours on July 19 and, for the week-long festival, more than 300 road closures and 500 clearways. Nine kilometres of roadblocks will allow 180,000 pilgrims to walk from North Sydney, across the bridge, through Darling Harbour and on to the [Randwick] racecourse.
I can easily avoid the city centre, but living very near to Randwick racecourse I’m concerned as to how the event will impact on local residents.
For example I’ve heard Alison Road, an arterial route that is part of the inner-city to Coogee Beach link, may be closed for two days.
There is one piece of good news for Sydneysiders though:
World Youth Day is the largest event in Sydney since the Olympics and commuters can expect a return to the glory days of September 2000, when the city appeared to have a near-faultless transport system.
“A near-faultless transport system?” Wonderful! Too bad it sounds like I won’t actually be able to leave the house to take advantage of it though.
Typical of our arrogant politicians safe in the knowledge they can do what they want with no fear of being booted out of office for wasting our money. And even if they are they are featherbedded for life, for them Australia is the best country in the world.