IN

his letters, Bob Janssen describes himself as “a founding and long-standing former member of the Light Rail Business Advisory Group”, so it is hardly surprising that he offers unqualified support for this expensive and disruptive project.

Very controversially, he argues that high-rise development down the length of the proposed Stage 3 is “the cost of making the light rail a sustainable project”.

And Janssen goes even further when he asserts that “taking more vehicles off the roads through an integrated public transport system offers the best solution” to future population growth.

The fact is that neither Mr Janssen

nor the Mayor of our city nor any of our city councillors will ever have to travel on the light rail to go to work or to shop.

They are blindly forging ahead with what they consider is best for the rest of us.

The rest of us very sensibly have come to live on the Gold Coast because of the undeveloped, relaxed and informal lifestyle of a small coastal city and all of us want to use our cars as much as we can.

All of us have seen the chaos and cost involved in laying eightmeter wide concrete footings and tracks in the centre of our most vital inner city roads and the devastation the outdated trams and tracks have brought to life and commerce in Southport, Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach.

CHRISTOPHER GORE-BOOTH LABRADOR