REMOVE THE BLINKERS
A POWER breakdown yesterday halted trains, demonstrating again why transport in southeast Queensland is a joke.
Rail passengers were delayed, waiting for buses that were rushed into service to move commuters, adding to the traffic volumes already choking the roads. Out on the M1 it was business as usual, with drivers crawling from one log jam to the next and praying there were no crashes up ahead.
It was a taste of a major threat to the success of our Commonwealth Games, when the State Government will pin its hopes on heavy rail getting tourists, and Brisbane and Sunshine Coast spectators, from the capital to the sport venues.
A proper solution to the transport mess will cost billions of dollars, but the pay-off will lie in the massive economic boost that comes with improved efficiency.
Federal Trade and Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo urged the Queensland Government to work with him in looking beyond old solutions. The State responded by slapping down his idea of investigating a proposed new commuter system – the Hyperloop One that is touted as being capable of shifting passengers from the Gold Coast to Brisbane in 10 minutes.
Yet all the Palaszczuk Government can offer to try to drag the Gold Coast out of a transport mire is to improve exit ramps and widen the M1 at its southern end, which should have been done when work began on the motorway back in the 1990s, and to keep banging the drum for its proposed Cross River Rail project in Brisbane to boost its slow and dated train service.
Politicians always play the blame game and in this instance, the Palasczcuk Government is playing the man rather than accepting its ideas belong to last century and a new approach is required. Whether our future lies in Mr Ciobo’s suggested supersonic pods or in a proven, proper highspeed rail model can only be determined by serious investigation, but that would be too long term for this State Government. It is only good at looking to the next election.
Australians have to look all the way back to the Chifley government to find an administration that committed to a true nation-building project which benefited the entire country. The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme was not only a monumental economic and engineering feat, it built a new society.
A proper high-speed transport system linking the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast would be an economic driver for the nation. All it would take to turn this, the fastest growing region in the country, into the economic powerhouse it could be is for politicians to remove the blinkers and look beyond self interest.