QLD State Budget - day after

I would first like to disclose that I find reading State Government Budget Papers very difficult.

According to the Governments own Media Release there is to be "$102 million Cycle network grants and capital programs" This looks all very encouraging until you start to wonder what the "and" is there for and weather or not capital programs are cycle programs or something other. I have looked in the Budget Paper 3 - Capital Statements for this $102 million and I can't find it. In fact the word cycle only appears twice in that document & only once when referring to bicycle infrastructure where it states "$16.4 million to for the development of regional cycle networks in South East Queensland". I am confused. groannnnnnnnn

Then there is the Transport & Main Roads Papers which state that last year 45kms of bikeway infrastructure was to be delivered but in fact only 20kms was put down. Then it states that this financial year they expect to lay 35kms. Now if you subtract the 25kms that was missing from last year that only means 10kms is to be laid ontop of what is a backlog from last year. This is not very much when you consider the distance between Brisbane and Cairns is near 1600kms.

This is all on top of the fact that 1 in 6 Transport and Main roads staff are to be dismissed from that department. According to the CBD BUG website twitter feed this includes staff in the cycling programs area.

On top of this according to the Courier Mail the worlds largest travel pattern change program Travelsmart is to be canned. This program informed people on how they could get about without using a car and was accepted to be successful at this. It is true it did give away backpacks which the now Government says was the only thing it was successful at. I would really like to understand how it failed because the graphs I was shown years ago said that it was working and working well.

With all the talk by the Government about how the they had to tighten the budget some how the Roads budget has yet again increased. I have to say I am less then impressed.

All in all I am less then impressed. Finding detail is very hard and the details I have found fill me with very little, for the coming year. The project I was most looking for was the Northern Cycleway but I am yet to find the word "Cycleway" anywhere in the documents. Another year another Road focused budget. Time to roll over and pretend it isn't happening.

To make me feel better here is a link to what maybe some of us will have resort to.
http://yehudamoon.com/20080319/