Light rail route strategy hits heights of cynicism

RE: “Height claim is off track”

(GCB, 6/12).

I can’t help thinking the “changes to the city plan would undergo comprehensive community consultation” potentially rates as a seriously flawed and cynical exercise designed to secure a specious “support” verdict from the Mermaid, Miami, Burleigh, Palm Beach and Currumbin communities.

Whether it’s for the light rail station location or for how tall the new highrises might rise to.

For example, the original route consultation process casually wrote off the thousand plus submissions from Bond Uni as “all from one server and therefore worth a single vote”.

How grossly cynical and unfair to the thousands of local staff and students who struggle through the horrors of Bundall Rd, the M1 and Gold Coast Highway traffic every day to get to the university campus, when the only good public bus service is along the Gold Coast Highway.

As an old pollster and expert in community consultation with over 20 years experience that is like a red rag to a bull.

The 6000 petitioners on the Palm Beach petition, the thousands on the Bond University petition, and even the local and state members are all on one side.

They are asking for a route that serves the mass transit needs of our community; that connects Bond Uni, Robina and Carrara Stadiums, six public and eight private high schools, Southern Cross Uni and the airport, shopping precincts, aged-care facilities, public open space and sports fields, and public and private hospitals.

Naturally all of that does not fit on one line of light rail. Opportunity beckons.

Our city population is expected to double up within the next two or three decades. We should, therefore, keep an eye on the bigger picture and help to bring a multi-mode public transport network into reality.

It really should serve our community and its massive growth with light and heavy rail, buses and bikeways.

And as you shiver in the afternoon shade along Surfers Paradise beach, ask yourself if all that big city development is what our community wishes for along our 34km of world’s best beach.

Cause that’s all we’ve got. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, BURLEIGH