At bursting point

THANK you Charles Wooley ( TasWeekend, June 8-9). I agree with all your statements, many of which I have tried to impart for the past three years. The almighty dollar is alive and well and our state is changing with great rapidity. And now a 40 per cent increase of cruise ships! Bruny Island can’t cope. Coles Bay is at bursting point and infrastructure is not keeping up. All our precious and peaceful places are being decimated and we the locals must pay our rates and taxes and grin and bear it. We do not want our national parks to be inundated with development. What has attracted people here in the first

Monorail lesson

CUSTOMARILY, the case for a Mt Wellington cable car is compared with cable cars around the world. The history of the Sydney Monorail might be more salutary. The decision to favour a monorail by the NSW government in 1985 against the wishes of Sydney City Council was seen as political. A 50-year concession was awarded to TNT Harbourlink, but in only half that time the monorail was destined to be decommissioned and dismantled: after only two years of operation, passenger numbers were half what was proposed (it was more expensive than other transport forms) and expansion was scaled back. Eventually, private ownership of the monorail was ceded to the government, and a year later the government closed it down. Premier Barry O’Farrell noted, at the time