Driven to end jams

FEW issues raise the collective ire of Gold Coasters like traffic congestion.

Even those who have lived here for five years or less say it has become noticeably worse since their arrival.

It’s a citywide problem. In the north, the choked M1 means arriving at work on time is a lottery. On the central Coast, getting the kids to school can mean spending 20 minutes to travel a few hundred metres. In the south, people taking advantage of cheaper housing and lifestyle opportunities in northern NSW find themselves beholden to a cross-border slog when visiting friends and family.

We were always used to traffic jams during the school holidays. Now that once-ayear inconvenience has become the new normal.

The issue is sure to figure at upcoming local, state and federal elections and politicians are beginning to sniff the breeze.

A solution to the long-running federalstate impasse over M1 funding would seem to be in the works and the Gold Coast City Council recently announced it was increasing its roads budget to $100 million although, as a university academic pointed out, that’s enough to build just 8km of a major road.

Public transport has a role to play but the Gold Coast light rail system is still immature and it will be a decade or more before trams leave the coastal strip and penetrate more western suburbs.

Even then, as we have seen from the Queensland Rail timetable debacle, people are always likely to have cause to drive.

The solution has to be a mix of public transport, better roads and bikeways.

Many will claim worsening traffic congestion is a fait accompli for growing cities. Why should that be the case? We are not an older city like Sydney where the mistakes of the past have sentenced residents to spending almost four days a year stuck in traffic.

It’s not too late for us to become a world leader in this fundamental aspect of liveability and productivity – provided we do more to address the problem now.