"large suburban neighborhoods built (without sidewalks) with no local "neighborhood" stores"


I'm not making this up, you know.

There is a little town called 'Plainlands'. There was a butcher next to the highway & a local crossroads - great local quality meat. A short distance away was built a Woolies small supermarket with a couple of shops.

Some idiot on the cross road then tried to drive his car with several family members thru the middle of a B Double petrol tanker (they have an extra tanker trailer as well as a full load on board) doing 100 kmph on the double road highway... the burning mess ended under a main feed HV power pole, which caused loss of power over a considerable area. According to the Aussie 'political rules of road improvement', this meant that several million dollars were then spent to build an overpass and cloverleaf spaghetti junction.

This went BETWEEN the butcher shop and the Woolies - thus making it IMPOSSIBLE to walk from one to the other without becoming roadkill - and one needs to drive round a mile long loop to get from one to the other, if you can merge into the traffic...

Great planning, guys...