LITTLE INCENTIVE TO DITCH CARS

POLITICIANS rarely tire of telling Gold Coasters that they should make better use of public transport.

The lecture is a familiar refrain when discussing the city’s constant traffic woes.

It is true that the Gold Coast remains highly car-dependent, with the overwhelming majority of journeys taken in private vehicles.

But it is also true that the key reason for this is that the majority of residents have little other choice.

Although enormous money has been poured into light rail, and enormous disruption caused to homes and businesses along its route, it is but a single fixed line that does not, for the most part, take residents directly where they need to go.

Instead, the key form of public transport in the city remains the bus network.

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the city’s hardworking drivers, the bus service remains patchy and unreliable.

While some corridors are well served, in huge parts of suburbia, the bus remains a lesser-spotted vehicle.

Many routes still have services that pass only once an hour, and stop running after seven o’clock.

The new bus timetable introduced today seeks to address some of these issues.

Improvements to some services in the northern Gold Coast are to be welcomed.

But as is so often the case, within the timetable are infuriating anomalies.

Currumbin MP Jann Stuckey is rightly incredulous that at a time when our theme parks need support, it has become more difficult than ever to reach them by public transport from the southen part of the city.

Given that the light rail stretches no further south than Broadbeach, it would surely make more sense to be boosting bus services there rather than curtailing them.

But southern residents appear to have been the biggest losers in the latest timetable tinkering.

It appears the private car will remain the only realistic mode of transport for some time yet.