The (Adelaide)
Advertiser announced on June 11, 2015, that there was ‘Praise and
brickbats for revised O-Bahn plan.’ What does ‘brickbats’ mean?
The name, O-Bahn
Busway, is a derivative of omnibus (O), meaning ‘for all people’ and bahn, the German word for railway. It is
an extension to the existing 1986 guided rapid bus transit system servicing the
northeastern suburbs of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It currently
carries an estimated 31,000 people per week day.
The government’s
O-Bahn project is a transport intervention costing $160 million to reduce
traffic congestion in the city, which was revised to reflect community and
business concerns. The changes included extending an underground component of
the bus tunnel so that it surfaces closer to Grenfell Street in the city,
creating an extra 50 car parking spaces on roads nearby.
Dictionary.com defines
brickbats as ‘pieces of broken brick, especially ones used as missiles’ and ‘an
unkind or unfavorable remark; caustic criticism.’ Hence the headline intends to
show that the plan for the O-Bahn extension has received both praise and
criticism. Therefore, let’s look for evidence of both praise and criticism in
the article.
The Advertiser states
that ‘The changes were widely welcomed by community and business groups, who
had campaigned against the project’ because they said the transport extension
would ‘butcher’ a park. The article adds that the government ‘backflipped on
the most controversial aspects of the O-Bahn extension.’ The conclusion was
that ‘Traffic congestion on one of the city’s main thoroughfares as a result of
the O-Bahn extension has not been fixed despite revised plans.’ Therefore,
indeed, the article shows that the O-Bahn extension has received both praise
and criticism.
Scorecard for The
Advertiser headline: 100%. Although people no longer throw brickbats, they certainly can
hurl insults and criticism for something they don’t like – in this case, the
response from the government to revise the transport plan to meet community
concerns. The use of the term ‘brickbats’ is therefore interesting, because it
denotes stronger resentment of the plan than merely stating that the community
had ‘concerns.’
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