This afternoon in Brisbane, the traffic version of a full-blown disaster played out. Just before the afternoon peak/rush-hour, the government decided to close the Riverside Expressway (see webcam shot right), which for the out-of-towners is the main arterial freeway leading into and out of Brisbane City and the central business district (CBD).

Anyone who has ever lived in Brisbane will tell you how much of a massive event this is. The result was total and utter traffic chaos on a scale that I have never seen before. Not only because of the closure, but that it happened almost immediately before the end of the business day, so that people leaving work did not know of the situation before they got in their cars and buses.

They closed the expressway because they had found a hairline crack in the Anne St on-ramp, which is an overpass that crosses over the whole expressway. The government said there was a very small chance that the on-ramp could collapse onto the expressway below, and thus had no choice but to close the whole thing.

I work in South Brisbane (directly across the river from the city and the expressway), and directly adjacent to the next most logical bridge to cross the river. I managed to just get out before the traffic excrement hit the proverbial fan, and had to make a huge loop around my normal route in order to avoid hitting the rapidly expanding traffic disaster zone.

The worst thing is that it is that the expressway is going to be closed indefinitely whilst engineers attempt to assess and rectify the situation. That means it could be days before it is reopened, and right smack in the middle of the week. The government has appealed to employers to stagger working times to avoid traffic congestion. I normally drive into work, and my route into work travels along the main roads that link into the two other alternative river crossings that all traffic will be diverted to.

I'm lucky however, I both live and work pretty close to train stations, so i'll be catching the train (which will as a result probably be packed as well) into work for the first time tomorrow to avoid the inevitable encore of the traffic disaster in the morning peak-hour. *sigh*

Anywho, I said in my last entry that I would lifeblog the weekend. Here it is quickly: Saturday: cleaned and washed the car, started work on website redesign, went to Church in the evening, and went to Nandos afterwards. Stayed up to wee hours working on website.

Sunday: woke up and went to Southside to witness the ordination into the diaconate of someone we know, afterward finished website redesign, went to football that night and lost against the team we beat 5-3 a few weeks ago (me playing probably my worst game since i returned from my broken foot: nothing went right at all), came back home and uploaded website changes and then went to sleep.