Imagine a city with little to no public transport. Where living merely an hour outside of the city may mean having but two opportunities a day to enter and exit. The minimal amount of transport that does exist includes small buses where you have to squeeze between a coughing pregnant lady and an alcoholic playing hip hop aloud from his phone speaker; as he drinks from a cola can that suspiciously doesn’t smell anything like cola. No I am not speaking of hell, but Hobart.
Now some alternatives exist to this flawed system. First you may have the wondrous luxury of being able to spend an extravagant amount to be chauffeured around by a lovely character that barely speaks any English and is potentially fleeing a war crime tribunal from a country with a name that I can’t even begin to pronounce. This luxurious experience may cost you upwards of $200 return if you live outside or even within that hour travelling distance.
Now the only other alternative that does exist is driving your own car. But don’t expect this to be a cheap venture either. For a cabal of vampires have taken over the city a long time ago and slowly transformed the entire area into one giant expensive car park. Consider you are lucky; you may be paying around $3 minimum every hour for the opportunity to spend even more money on shopping at the failing retail stores. Or you may have the lovely opportunity to participate in the cycle of working in Hobart, to pay for the exorbitant fees of parking to work in Hobart. Now $3 is the minimum, the more pristine streets such as Salamanca Place gives you the gracious courtesy of paying over $5 an hour to wine and dine with the big dogs. Collins Street even has $10 an hour for parking.
So has anything been done to solve this crisis you may ask? Ironically the only solution that has been provided is to block off and limit times for on – street parking. Forcing the population into large multi – level car parks where they must breathe in carbon monoxide until their untimely death: related or not. Even areas outside of the CBD such as Battery Point and Sandy Bay have become littered with yellow lines, to inform the local civilians that those publicly funded roads are not to be parked on by the public.
This whole damn city is built on scamming me for parking funds. Or face the consequences of being fined and scammed for even further funds. I for one will be boycotting the city built on blood, sweat and parking fines. And I don’t think I’ll be missing out on anything but a depreciating bank account.
