RECLAIM THE STREETS - CROSS CITY TUNNEL - DIRECT ACTIONS AND STREET PARTY!
Reclaim The Streets! - Cross City Tunnel Occupation! – Saturday 8Th April 2006 – Meet at the IMAX 1pm for a Direct Action Street Party!
An RTS has been called for Saturday the 8Th of April. At 1pm a chaotic and flamboyant mix of angry residents, disgruntled business owners, activists, environmentalists, and party people will converge on the onerous ventilation stack at Darling Harbour in protest, before taking to the streets for the radical street party Sydney has never seen.
The urban landscape must provide spaces for our lives and future – not detract from them in the name of profit and environmental degradation. Through dancing, games, and creative non-violent forms of dissent in normally dead, transitory spaces, the community will let the State Government and corporations involved in the debacle know that enough’s enough!
Why We Are Reclaiming the Cross City Tunnel
• The (largely hush hush) environmental impact of the huge ventilation chimney next to the IMAX. Unfiltered exhaust fumes are polluting an important residential and tourist hub.
• The cynical employment of the Cross City Tunnel as a money making venture for the State Government and a shadowy international consortium including the Macquarie Bank, the board of which Bob Carr now sits.
• The greedy and coercive tactics used by those who profit, such as road narrowing and traffic light manipulation, and the complete disrespect shown towards those who use the roads, or live and work around William Street.
• The impact upon the communities of the “feeder suburbs” such as Glebe and Rushcutters Bay, as more traffic, noise, and pollution encroach upon once quiet neighborhoods.
Storm, from the RTS Sydney Crew states aptly: “We believe more roads are not the answer, especially private ones, and we want to see more bicycle infrastructure, investment in long term sustainable transport, and a greater emphasis on public consultation prior to, and inclusion in, the design process.
We believe that this farce is the direct result of a State Government with too much power and no direct accountability to the people whose lives it directly affects. The tunnel is losing close to $5, 000, 000 a month, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out who will pick up the tab.
The Taxpayers and public transport users of NSW will be forced to pay for the State Government’s greed, unaccountability and stupidity. The occupation of the Cross City Tunnel will send a clear message to the State Government and any other entity that attempts to cynically manipulate us: Our social spaces are ours, and we will not be administered and monopolised in our everyday lives!”
A Short History of RTS and it's Broad Ideological Premises
Reclaim the Streets began in The United Kingdom in the 1990's, and has since been adopted by autonomous activist groups the world over. It is a tool to regain a sense of community via direct forms of resistance against largely unaccountable Governmental and Corporate structures which attempt to dominate and administer our (potentially!) mundane modern lives. An RTS also aims to subvert the dominance of cars in the urban landscape and the reliance upon environmentally damaging, non-sustainable fossil fuels. By Reclaiming the Streets and holding a massive street party in normally dead space, lonely transitory spaces are re-inscribed as creative and autonomous social spaces where people can play, resist, and express themselves without fear of coercion and prejudice.
As yet there are no plans to go through the tunnel –YUK! Imagine the fumes and the free kick the police will be handed to indulge in a piece unaccountable brutality!
We advise everybody who wants to come to form into affinity groups now and make sure you bring your bikes, banners, costumes, water, sunscreen and anything else you will need to make your presence felt in Sydney’s biggest street party! Your creativity and ingenuity are your only limits! Non Violent Direct Action, Sustainability, Self Expression and Community are the guiding principles of any RTS.
Meet 1pm Saturday 8Th of April at IMAX Darling Harbour for the street party Sydney has never seen!
RTS Crew Sydney 2006.
Contact: The RTS Crew on 0437582717, 0437940265 or email: reclaim_the_streets_cct@yahoo.com.au
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End the crosscity madness!
Don't forget that public transport users have been made to pay for the cross city monster with the closure of bus lanes and the diversion of public funds that are desperately needed for our crumbling and dangerously outdated rail infrastructure.
The pollution causes heart disease and stoke(1), lung disease(2) and cancer(3). Many people are killed, squished, torn apart, and maimed(4).
Cars are killing our economy, essentially sending your hard earned overseas in exchange for CO2 and a host of other pollutants. The RTA in NSW alone blows a budget $ 2 800 000 000 per year(6). The car economy is harming our health, dividing communities, poisoning our environment and contributing significantly to global warming with untold consequences venturing further in to the billions. The billions we blow on roads, cars and oil could be far more wisely spent in truly productive and sustainable investments such as renewable energy and public transport.
The privatization of transport infrastructure must stop immediately. It encourages the development of unsustainable transport leading to more pollution, more gridlock, a greater dependence on foreign oil. It is poisoning our democracy with hundreds of millions of kickbacks to governments political parties(7)(8)
Its time for this madness to stop. We need real transport alternatives now! Trains, Trams Bikes and Buses, the longer we wait the more expensive and difficult it will be. Peak oil is here and it is leading to an increase in the cost of developing infrastructure. Sydney's population density is growing and with it land values are soring.
Every day we put this off, only add's to the inevitable cost of fixing this mess!
Nice poster, and a fine choice of location.
Lets keep it peacefull!
(1) Air Pollution, Heart Disease and Stroke, American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4419
(2) OUTDOOR AIR POLLUTION & LUNG DISEASE, The Australian Lung Foundation, http://www.nevdgp.org.au/info/lungf/pollution-health.html
(3) DIESEL AND GASOLINE ENGINE EXHAUSTS, International Agency for Research on Cancer, http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol46/46-01.htm
(4) Road Deaths Australia 2004 Statistical Summary, Australian Transport Safety Bureau, http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2004/pdf/rfa2004.pdf
(5) Serious Injury Due To Road Crashes, Australian Transport Safety Bureau, http://www.atsb.gov.au/road/statistics/serious_injury_statistics.aspx
(6) RTA Annual Report 2005, http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/publicationsstatisticsforms/downloads/2005_rta_annual_report.pdf
(7) Cross City Tunnel, wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_City_Tunnel#Criticisms
(8) ANNUAL RETURNS LOCATOR SERVICE, AES, http://fadar.aec.gov.au/
Smokestack
Personally, I think the smokestack next to Imax is a really cool bit of design. I'm sure plenty of greenies are pissed off it's not made out of bricks and doesn't look like an evil chimney of doooooom.
An honest question however - how is it any worse for the environment? I would assume the level of vehicle emissions is a constant, whether they are above ground or in the tunnel. How does chanelling that pollution alter the net amount?
reply for Nazihunter
Nazihunter,
With an above ground freeway the pollution disperses. With tunnels the pollution is concentrated around the stacks and in the tunnel itself.
Dispersion
I understand that... However, ultimately the pollution will disperse irrespective of its origin no?
I can entirely understand why people wouldn't want the smokestack right on top of them (e.g the proposed Lane Cove tunnel exhausts) but the Imax one appears to be relatively benign in this regard. My question was in relation to its slamming in the original article.
Well having lived for 4 years near M5 East stack
... until last year, here's what it does. The pollution sits around the valleys and troughs made by buildings or geography especially on cold and calm nights until the sun warms up the air currents and a slight breeze gets going. Remember its invisible but you find yourself gasping and start wondering why. It's quite insidious. Around the M5 East it was like slowly drowning in toxic gas. My health and well being is massively improved even after 6 months from that valley living in Balmain.
I feel better, look better, swim 20 laps fairly often getting the aerobic fitness back. I used to puff walking up stairs. Admittedly I've dieted too but I am pretty sure it was that stack pooling the crap in Turrella valley.
Lastly, the eddies and air currents in a irregular space like that at Darling Harbour would likely be a virtually impossible challenge for the experts to model, a similar problem for odour experts in public or private legal nuisance cases against industry in the urban interface.
I feel sorry for anyone in an apartment near by, or having to work at nights in the area especially in the pre dawn early morning. Naturally calm hot days will be similarly bad with NOX ... that's oxides of nitrogen, a dangerous poisonous gas ... formed by photochemical smog.
smoke stack
all that shit settles on you washing when you hang it on the line. So unless you are a goth and wear nothing but black geting your clothes dry is a bitch!
William Street
The narrowing of William St and widening of footpaths, is one positive thing about this whole mess. At least for us non car owners who like to walk around this beautiful city.