Region’s a slave to cars
WHAT DO YOU THINK CAN BE DONE BETTER ON THE GOLD COAST?
“I think people are forgetting and not appreciating what’s here.
“That warm, welcoming nature seems to have disappeared. When I travel, people appreciate their jobs, the visitors; it’s very friendly.
“It seems at the moment a lot of the Gold Coast isn't seeing what they’ve got; they’re seeing what they don’t have.
“I think we need to do a lot of self promotion for Gold Coasters, and focus on the locals.
“Also our priority is a totally integrated public transport system because at the moment we’ve got a very fragmented Gold Coast.
“Most places around the
world where I’ve travelled you can always get from a to b on trains, trams, fast trains; here as a local I have difficulty working out how to get to places without having a car.
“As commercial developers, every time we have a new tenant coming through looking, the first question is ‘how much parking can we get?’.
“It’s all good and well to put in the light rail, which I use
regularly, but for the general public to use the light rail they’ve got to get to it, then they’ve got to find somewhere to park.
“You need feeder lines to get people from the suburbs to be able to go down the coastline.
“The trains are slow; we need a faster, more visible transport system.
“It’s proven very successful
overseas that where people physically saw the public transport they would use it.
“Here we’re building these massive highways, which are just carparks; you get one accident and you’re stuck in a carpark for hours.
“You’ve got a train that goes through that really should have been put in a better location; it should go down to the airport and better still to Coolangatta. I’ve got a staff member who works over the border and he had some car trouble and couldn’t drive to work.
“He was going to have to Uber from his place to the bus stop, take a bus to Coolangatta, get on another bus to Pacific Fair, then from there get on a tram to get up to (Southport); the day would have been half over.
“We need a traffic plan that incorporates parking, feeder trains or buses and definitely extending the light rail.”
IN YOUR TRAVELS, WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN BEING DONE ELSEWHERE YOU THINK COULD WORK WELL HERE?
“In Copenhagen they have a very structured system for cycling.
“I spent most of my time in Copenhagen on a pushbike; they’ve got traffic lights that are especially for pushbikes, designated lanes for pushbikes, a respect for pushbikes.
“They do it in bits and pieces here; you’ve got a little green line but all of a sudden you’ve got to join in with cars.
“We need a traffic management plan. We’ve got to get the cars off the road.”
IF MONEY, LAWS, TIME AND APPROVALS WERE NO ISSUE, WHAT IS ONE BIG PROJECT YOU’D UNDERTAKE TOMORROW?
“The public transport infrastructure system, incorporating carparking into it. You need to have feeder lines where people can park their cars because we’ve got a huge population west of the beaches.
WHAT CONVERSATIONS SHOULD GOLD COAST MOVERS AND SHAKERS BE HAVING?
“Keeping our youth engaged, inspired, mentoring and training them into work.
“Everybody should take into consideration a program to inspire and mentor, not only kids coming out of universities but also look at those coming out of schools and get them into apprenticeships and traineeships.”