Lloyd St Bridge input

Dear Echo News,

The May 15 issue of Echo News contained two stories about transportation infrastructure in the Midland area, one specifically about the proposed Lloyd Street bridge and the other about cross-agency transport planning in general.

Both articles indicate that community input is a “top priority” in these processes, with the article about the bridge stating explicitly that Main Roads is working with “Traditional Owners, environmental groups” and the City of Swan in this process.

While the Traditional Owners have been consulted since the 2022 invocation of Section 18, as a member of one of the environmental groups I can state unequivocally that we know of no one from Main Roads (or Mr Catania’s group) who has contacted any of us to discuss plans for the bridge since 2023.

To reconfirm our original position, we are not opposed to construction of a bridge at, or near this location: our objections have always been and remain to the project as put forth by Main Roads.

We would be more than happy to propose, discuss, and review options and plans for the construction on the river with any and all agencies, if invited to the table.

Traffic flow documents from Main Roads and presented to the city regarding the formerly-proposed four lane bridge design indicate that this will not lead to a transportation miracle in Midland, but instead just increase congestion.

This modelling indicated that truck traffic from Hazelmere will overwhelm the bridge and nearby intersections (GEH) and would result in wait times of up to nearly one hour on just the bridge itself.

Clearly that does nothing to improve ingress and egress to and from Midland.

Taking a step back from the proposed bridge, it is clear that the longer-term plan is to make use of the full Lloyd Street road reserve north of Great Eastern Highway.

This corridor remains largely obscured due to the parallel access roads just west of the current main street.

If the bridge is built as currently proposed, it seems patently obvious that a build out of Lloyd Street to provide an alternative trucking route to Toodyay Road and on to Roe/Reid highways and a future east link is part of the plan.

While this plan might have made sense decades ago when the area was mostly vacant land, it is now completed bounded by mature housing developments.

Main Roads cast its options more than a decade ago when it built out Roe/Reid as the trucking route.

A Lloyd Street build-out would be extremely destructive to mature neighbourhoods and communities that have developed along the current configuration by introducing truck traffic never imagined by any for the area.

Roe/Reid should be embraced for trucking, rather than retrospectively imposing the resurrection of a bygone concept of a plan on the area.

I commend MLA Catania for convening a working group on these issues, as there are solutions that can be found given the current state of development and the late-to-the-table planning process.

But without broad public input from all sides (ie, real people, not just bureaucrats and businesses) in the planning phases there will likely be no consensus or progress on the transportation debacle (let me count the ways) that currently defines transit in Midland.

Dr R Ilchik
South Guildford

Is AI a waste of energy?

Dear Echo News,

The news that the proposed Hazelmere data centre has been shelved is welcome, but it brings to mind a question.

I’ve noticed over the last year or so that when I make an inquiry using Google, almost always a page appears at the top labelled AI Overview.

On one occasion I scrolled down to the bottom of this page and found, in small print, the following disclaimer: “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses”.

What’s the point of AI if humans have to check the result?

Talk about a waste of energy.

KG Blake

Lesmurdie

Wildlife will survive

Dear Echo News,

Why are you so negative H Sanders?

It seems that Jorgensen Park is the centre of the universe, and all wildlife will die because of this event.

Come-on, give credit to our wildlife on their ability to survive.

I am sure that the City of Kalamunda will have pamphlets, highlighting as to what we can offer at point of entry, as so hopefully after this event, they will come again, and see what we can offer, so we can benefit long term.

R Furfaro
Kalamunda