A crucial transport decision.

Wollongong - the seventh largest city in Australia - has a problem. The heart of the city was decaying and new shopping centres in the southern suburbs were expanding. In an attempt to rejuvenate the city centre it was turned into a pedestrian friendly mall decades ago. Unfortunately this was less than successful. One of the problems was access. Shoppers complain that parking is scarce - and after hours the mall degenerated into a no-go area of hoodlums and drug pushers.
Now there are proposals to open the mall at night to slow, one way vehicular traffic.Public opinion polls are decidedly against this idea, but council is desperately looking for a solution to the mall problems and seems to favour the idea. The cost of implementing such a traffic flow is estimated at twenty million dollars.
Now there is a new proposal. This idea is to run a tram from the hospital at the top of Crown street down through the mall to the beach precinct and then to north Wollongong's Northbeach hotel - where there is land available for a large commuter carpark.
This seems to solve several problems. Another of Wollongong's problems is lack of parking near the hospital. A tram that could deliver visitors and patients from a remote car parking area should be popular and the idea of a tram has obvious tourist potential.
Wollongong council should proceed with caution. It states that the city's disintegrating road system needs an injection of thirteen million dollars to be brought up to date. Instead of spending twenty million allowing car traffic through the mall it might be a good idea to test the tram idea by providing a feeder bus service from north Wollongong to the hospital. This could be done by leaving the mall as it is and routing the bus around it - dropping and picking up passengers at either end of the closed mall section. Motorists would appreciate part of that twenty million dollars so saved being spent to bring our streets to an acceptable standard.
The tram sounds like a good idea - but before huge sums are spent it would be possible to test the concept for very little money - and no costly alterations to the mall. So far this proposal has not been put to the city residents. It should be fully investigated before any firm decision is made !