YOUR VIEWS
SO the once great USA is again stirring up things with Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, which many will not understand was once part of the Chinese Empire.
May I suggest that if Xi Jinping met with a group of indigenous American people who had lost everything to the growth of Europeans from the East, the USA would be screaming how terrible this was.
Yet for some reason its OK for the USA to do this but not for China. Why?
ROBERT EADIE, GOLD COAST
THE Gold Coast begins at Coolangatta, not at Helensvale.
Southern Gold Coast residents and tourists desperately need a fast and direct heavy rail link from Gold Coast Airport to the Brisbane Airport, which deposits travellers in the Brisbane CBD. This will take a lot of vehicles and traffic off the M1.
How is it possible that Minister Bailey and Mayor Tate did not discuss this small “operational” problem of the Gold Coast train no longer continuing to the Brisbane Airport?
This pathetic excuse for the promotion of Stage 4 of the tram shows complete disregard for the wishes and opinions of southern Gold Coast residents, who, once again, have been largely ignored.
DIANA TRAVERSI, TUGUN
IN southeast Queensland we are seeing the transformation of the passenger rail network that has developed over the past 147 years, commencing in 1875.
The opening of Cross River Rail in 2025 will deliver Brisbane’s first underground rail network and like many global cities including London’s Tube, New York’s City Subway, Paris Metro and Singapore’s MTR. passengers interchange between trains and lines seamlessly.
Anyone who has visited these global cities has travelled on the underground rail network, changed trains many times and arrived at their destination as planned, nothing difficult about that. I used the London Tube for a decade and managed to navigate my way around the city with three changes on the way to work.
The Gold Coast isn’t losing a train service to the Brisbane Domestic and International Airport, it’s gaining three new train stations, Merrimac, Hope Island and Pimpama, a modern, efficient faster service to the Brisbane CBD, and yes those wishing to travel to the airport will need to change trains, hardly an onerous task, it’s all part of the travel experience.
The thousands of rail commuters doing the daily trip to Brisbane will have far more choice in destinations with three new underground stations, Woolloongabba, Albert, and Roma Street, not to mention the Exhibition station servicing the new business hub in Bowen Hills and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
As a frequent commuter to Brisbane, I can’t wait for the faster rail trips, new stations and given the volume of Gold Coasters commuting each day, I would imagine they will be very happy with the new underground network.
I’ve heard people say, “it’s a disincentive and stressful to have to change trains to get to the Brisbane Airport”. Stress is the uncertainty of how long a trip to Brisbane on the M1 will take and sitting in a conga line of cars taking over two hours or more to get to Brisbane because of yet another accident.
RICHARD HOLLIDAY, BENOWA