Random Sydney Thing #2 - Crazy Roads

The Sydney CBD is an odd, crowded place. The buildings are crowded right up against the street; people crowd the footpaths in the tiny spaces between the buildings and the road, which is crowded with cars and a never-ending supply of taxis and buses.

All of the streets in the CBD are one way, and because the skyscrapers are so close to the road, trying to use GPS is completely futile. The arrow on the GPS screen spins around and around and eventually it gives up, tells you that Sydney is crap and turns itself off in a huff until it senses that you’re on your way home. At least I imagine that’s what it would have done if I hadn’t thrown it into the back seat of the car in disgust.

You can find yourself driving around in circles for what seems like hours as you try to find your way onto the street that your hotel is on without entering one block too far up and watching the hotel sign disappear behind you as the one way traffic speeds you away from your destination.

On Friday, it took us about half an hour or so after reaching the CBD to make it the 5 blocks to where our hotel was located.
We parked in a tiny little alcove out the front of our hotel and a harried looking doorman (who actually turned out to be the concierge) ran out to the car and tried to explain how to get to the self-parking via a complicated series of one way roads. Sensing that we would need a map, a compass, a full tank of fuel and several days worth of emergency rations to get to the self parking, and since I’d left my hiking boots at home, we opted instead for outrageously expensive valet parking.

Sydney would have to be one of the few places in Australia where it’s possible to spend more money parking your car for the weekend than your car is actually worth. The hotel’s self-parking cost the same as what Valet parking in Melbourne costs, and the valet parking was more than double that. Still, totally worth it in my eyes, because it meant that we didn’t have to try to navigate any more of those crazy roads.


The other strange thing about Sydney streets is that as you reach the edges of the CBD, the roads have a kind of ‘thrown in as an after-thought’ quality about them. They wind in and out of each other, with exits thrown in all over the place. There is an entire series of narrow tunnels that run underneath the city, and there are intersections within the tunnels. If you accidentally find yourself taking a wrong exit and you end up in a tunnel, you have to drive to the other side of the city before you can find a way back. The tunnels are kind of creepy too – they’re very narrow and very long, and at one point we found ourselves in a one lane tunnel with a hairpin bend in it.

This little bit of Sydney is my particular favourite:

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People who visit Melbourne from Sydney must find the streets and CBD layout luxuriously expansive and easy to navigate.