PATRICK O’DONNELL, BURLEIGH WATERS

GOLD Coast City Council has plans to build a footpath on the north side of Honeyeater Drive from Cassowary to Mountain Highway starting in July.

Many local ratepayers are concerned about many previous botched projects like the first planned bridge across Miami Lake. Several truckloads of large boulders were placed in the lake by a large crane, then the project was aborted, the boulders removed and trucked away at great cost.

The council then planned to put speed humps in Cassowary but halfway through the construction a motorist pointed out a car could straddle the humps, they were too narrow, so that project was also aborted and the road repaired. Again, a waste of money.

They then decided to beautify

Honeyeater Drive, planting trees on both sides. Large holes were bored in the nature strip, the soil removed and trees planted. As the trees grew, fences started to crack and lean so council then had root barriers installed at many properties. Many of these trees will now be removed as they will damage the new footpath, another expensive blunder.

Council then decided to reduce the width of the traffic lane in Honeyeater Drive and increase the width of the parking/cycling lane by about 400mm. The original white line had to be removed, with costly sandblasting instead of being painted over. The footpath soon to be constructed on the north side of Honeyeater Drive means the many schoolchildren that ride bikes, skateboards etc have to cross the nine streets that enter Honeyeater, and this also applies to elderly pedestrians.

The large volume of people who cross the bridge must do so on a bend in the street. If the footpath was built on the south side, there would be no streets entering it, making it much safer for all concerned, but the engineer who claims to be in charge of this project said it would cost more. It wasn’t a surprise to see this engineer doing a letter drop in the street and later riding a scooter. Is this going to be another overpriced botched project?