ROAD CHANGES MISTAKE
AARON Harper, I will admit I voted for you because politically because I am slightly left-of-centre. You were the best of a sorry lot. The quality of candidates for office now is not very good at all.
This letter, however, concerns your approval of the new Beck Drive access points to the motorway and the subsequent closure of the accesses from Riverway. All traffic that used to travel through the intersection at Gouldian Ave and turn north just a couple of hundred metres further on will now have to slow down, interrupting travel flow behind, turn left down a suburban street (Gouldian Ave), past the intersections of the following, Lorikeet, Pinnacle Drive, Mallee Street, Condor, Peacock, South Vickers, Currawong, and Eider. Then to navigate to the intersection at Beck Drive, turn right to the on-take of the motorway. Each of those intersections carry a sizeable quantity of traffic at peak hour as it is, with some extra traffic now coming into the mix.
I have seen in the mornings about 6am big trucks with trailers travelling Riverway and turning north via on-take just past
Gouldian Ave. Now you want them to travel a suburban feeder street spewing all their diesel fumes into the houses along the street and especially into the child care centre at the intersection of Beck and Gouldian.
By the way, schoolchildren from Thuringowa State High School cross Gouldian so they also may have difficulty with the excess amount of traffic you want on the road. Do you care about their safety?
You said Beck Drive would become a four-lane road. At the intersection of Beck and Gouldian there is a roundabout that has four lovely fig trees planted and are growing well. Making a four-lane road will mean traffic lights and the destruction of that roundabout. That would be against your Labor Party platform and make you an environmental vandal. I draw your attention to the Transport Department TRR5 Sustainability Policy Point Number 2, which I paraphrase, “working closely with customers, stakeholders and local communities to achieve resilient outcomes for all”. I have not seen much of that from you.
I believe roads are made for the present and the future, not just so they can close them down on a whim by some bureaucrat in Brisbane who thinks it is a good idea. Otherwise, why build? I am not against the new access points to the motorway off Beck Drive, just do not push the extra traffic down and up Gouldian.
My family has been living on Gouldian since 1985 and have seen a lot of changes, one being a very short street to finally meeting up with Beck Drive and a big number of houses built either on or around the intersections mentioned. Now you want to ruin it.
TED BELKMEER,
Condon.