With the election of Andrew Antoniolli to the post of Mayor a new election is on its way for the position of Division 7 Councillor. To be fair, I haven’t been following closely like I was for the mayor position, but some things came through my Facebook feed that I think are grand.

Candidate Jim McKee recently posted this statement regarding the conversion of Brisbane and Limestone from one-way to two-way streets. While I don’t know if I agree with this statement, I do love the fact that he is thinking incrementally.

What I mean by this is what are the potential upsides and downsides to this project?

Recent articles out of America suggest many smaller cities are moving from duel one-way traffic back to their two-way roots. This article out of South Bend, Indiana show just how drastic a change this can make for properties in the area.

While this is just one of many conversions that have been done in North America it shows that the potential for upside benefits can be great. But what about downside?

This is why I love this project. The downside is that we can just revert it back to duel one-way streets at a bit of cost. While it may be political suicide to say this, sometimes councils make mistakes. But mistakes that can be reversed are a lot better than ones that keep failing more and more.

To contrast this, the newly designed CBD redevelopment will come at a cost of $150 Million. While the potential upsides are all there, who is to say that history won’t repeat itself? It hasn’t even been 30 years since Ipswich City Square opened and it is already being reimagined.

What happens if the redevelopment fails? Will we have another half empty mall devoid of people for more than half the day? What makes the council think it knows so much more than it did? It doesn’t, as can be shown by the fact that it is repeating its mistake.