Direct tram route to airport lacks connection to assets
THE article (GCB, 7/3) announcing the entire route to the airport along the old Gold Coast Hwy looks like a serious case of “design to fail”.
It’s the cheapest, but not the best value to the community.
It’s the least upsetting for the NIMBY locals, but misses most of the obvious destinations a fixed public transport route should connect with, such as schools, hospitals, Bond University and every transport interchange, not to mention both sporting stadia and those future Olympic venues.
It also misses our other major employment nodes in the six shopping centres between the airport and Broadbeach, as well as all the private and public schools either side of the M1. You know, places where children have to go and who don’t drive cars and places where low-paid shop assistants and workers at institutions would like to go without a car.
It encourages higher density development, but at what cost to our lifestyle if any controls attached to the Town Plan are overridden by the proximity clause of the light rail, that lets higher and higher high-rise pop up along its entire length.
Waikiki in Hawaii shows you how it’s done in the worst way, but at least there is only 6km of one beach buried behind blocks full of 30-plus storey high-rise. We have 35km of beach from the Seaway to Point Danger. There are no hard and fast rules in urban design but it’s generally agreed that 100 per cent over development usually leads to a totally unliveable city.
Do we really want to trash our enviable lifestyle? Surfers, Main Beach, Broadbeach, Burleigh Beach, Tallebudgera, Palm Beach, Kirra, Coolangatta, Greenmount and Rainbow Bay are already high-rise heavy. I’d have to include The Spit to the Seaway as heading that way with a cruise ship terminal in the offing.
That leaves Mermaid Beach, Nobbys and Miami Beach, Currumbin Beach, Tugun Beach, Pacific, North Kirra and Bilinga Beaches. They all face a similar fate unless our community says no thanks, especially if the controls of the town plan are no longer in play. Time to draw a line in the sand. And it starts with the route of the light rail.
Join the dots. Do it right the first time. “Design to fail” is not a legacy the Gold Coast needs. The report of a fleet of E-buses proposed to create an east/west network is screaming for serious investigation and points to a solution that serves our growing community with all the flexibility to meet seasonal, weekend and working-week needs.
Teamed with online or mobile phone apps, it has the ability to meet current and future demand far more effectively than an outdated light rail model that not only triggers an avalanche of over development, but trashes our fabulous lifestyle.
C.P.E. SMITH, BURLEIGH HEADS