Mar 31, 2010

The New Clem7 Tunnel

The New Clem7 Tunnel The new Clem7 Tunnel opened the other day.

Catchy name, right? It's named after a bloke called Clem Jones who was a Lord Mayor of Brisbane. He died while they were trying to think of a name for the tunnel (the Aussies have to name everything after somebody) and hey presto, it's the Clem Jones Tunnel. It's also part of the M7 motorway - apparently - so Clem7.

It runs from just opposite the hospital where Nicole works southwards all the way under the city and the river and pops out on the southside. It's around 7km long. maybe that's secretly why it's Clem 7 too.

It'll be a toll tunnel but it's been toll-free for its first few weeks of operation. I drove through it one day and got from Bowen Hills (the North end) to the Princess Alexandra hospital (the South end) in about ten minutes flat. And back again. When we went through it, hur hur, "as a family," hur hur, it took longer, it being a Saturday and there being a traffic jam.

So it's all part of the huge infrastructure build that's going on in Brisbane at the moment to try to do something about the ever-increasing traffic problem, the by-product of the fact that it seems that everybody and his dog wants to live here.

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