GCCC elections 2016

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Brisbanetimes--> Tate promises free off-peak travel for seniors, new bid for cruise ship

Gold Coast seniors would receive free travel on public transport outside peak hours for four years if Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate is re-elected on March 19.

Cr Tate challenged mayors across Queensland to help seniors obtain free off-peak public transport but did not say whether he had raised the idea with Translink, which would need to agree with the promise.

"I would like to negotiate with the state government that we lock it in for four years to give seniors certainty," Cr Tate said on Thursday.
The mayor said off-peak seniors public transport move would cost Gold Coast City Council $3.2 million over four years.
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Cr Tate said seniors deserved the free travel.

"After all, if you look at the statistics, seniors are the ones who do about 60 per cent of the volunteer work," he said.

"They are part of the community and they should be able to go to libraries, go and see friends and their children.

"...I would urge lord mayors and candidates in Brisbane and other cities to look after their seniors and come up with the idea of free senior travel off-peak around the state."

Cr Tate has also promised a "Plan B" for a new cruise ship terminal on the Gold Coast and his preference to extend the light rail to the Gold Coast Airport at Tugun as stage three.

His first bid for a cruise ship terminal on on Wavebreak Island near the Southport Broadwater was reviewed then rejected by the incoming Labor state government in 2015.

"That's politics," Cr Tate said, promising a second bid shortly.

"I will announce that in the very near future as soon as I get my costings done."

But one of Cr Tate's electoral  rivals as Gold Coast mayor, solicitor and former Queensland Reds player Jim Wilson, said the mayor's pro-development push was "getting ahead of the people".

"The mayor and all his councillors – particularly the mayor – need to show leadership and get into the zone of 'uncomfortable debate' with developers and other people," he said.

"Whether they are getting too far ahead of the people and whether they are explaining what it means to their lifestyle and their rates and their ability to show their visitors around without having to be blocked in gridlock."

Cr Tate promised to keep rates rises at CPI or lower and and said he would make policy announcements every two days during the mayoral campaign.

Cr Tate, who secured 33 per cent of the primary vote in 2012, said he anticipated eight mayoral candidates to throw their hat into the ring in 2016.

Five others have already announced their bids.

Joining Mr Wilson in opposing Cr Tate was Gold Coast blood bank senior executive and former Labor candidate Penny Toland, former Mermaid Beach Labor state candidate Gary Pead, Brett Lambert and John Abbott.

Mr Wilson, from Tallebudgera, was a foundation member of the Gold Coast Surfing Museum at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

Mr Wilson was responsible for establishing the Gold Coast's Bleach Festival and the Kirra Kite Festival and helped establish the early moves for the successful World Surfing Reserve on the Gold Coast.

Mr Wilson said he believed some in the current council had lost contact with the people of the Gold Coast.

"There are some others councillors in the mayor's current cabal who are blind to what the people want to see and hear," he said.

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Gold Coast Bulletin --> Mayor Tom Tate floats Broadwater and Gold Coast canal ferry service in re-election bid

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Gold Coast Bulletin --> More than 30,000 cars must be off GC roads during Commonwealth Games as bike plan promoted

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Brisbanetimes --> Gold Coast City Council election: The candidates for Tom Tate's job

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Brisbanetimes --> Gold Coast council election: Tate outlines off-shore cruise terminal plans

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Sent to all outlets:

3rd March 2016

Gold Coast: Bus concerns

RAIL Back on Track is pleased to see that TransLink has commenced reporting quarterly patronage and on-time running figures for various parts of the SEQ bus network in its Q2 2015/2016 TransLink Tracker.  Of particular note is that patronage is broken down so that there is now a meaningful set of numbers for the Gold Coast as distinct from the rest of the region.

Patronage on the light rail service is continuing to expand to the point where nearly 2 million trips are being made each quarter.  Growth is continuing and the delivery of the GCUH to Helensvale extension over the next 2 years will result in even greater gains.

We are also very pleased to see that most of the Gold Coast's bus services are operating on time, and in fact are outperforming Brisbane's network in on-time running despite not having access to expensive grade-separated busways.

However, the numbers also make it apparent that bus patronage since Q1 of 2014/2015 has been relatively static, at approximately 3.5 million trips per quarter.  Population growth has continued city-wide over the past several years.  In particular the City of Gold Coast is the local government area home to the largest growth in Queensland's aged population in the period from 2003 to 2013, with a larger increase than Brisbane in absolute terms (23,400 vs 22,320).  Static bus patronage means that the network is serving less of the public need, as the proportion of trips made decreases relative to population.

The long-term success of public transport on the Gold Coast is intricately linked to the feeder bus network, and its ability to provide connections for people who are not in the walk-up catchment of a light or heavy rail station or a major centre.  The light rail was never meant to be a silver bullet to our transport problems and should not be seen as such.

It concerns us that there has been no real bus service upgrade to the Gold Coast's bus network since 21 July 2014, when G:Link commenced operating revenue services and the bus network was reorganised around tram services.  While it is clear that this has worked seeing that public transport patronage is rising as a whole and the bus network is not seeing any drop-off, we are not seeing any kind of drive to improve bus patronage.

We call on all candidates running for office at the upcoming City of Gold Coast elections to set out their position on public transport service improvements that will drive patronage and mode-shift to a more sustainable transport network.

In particular, we are interested to know what candidates' views are on committing more of the City's financial resources into co-funding the provision of additional bus services on existing routes with TransLink.  GCCC has pioneered introducing new services on a trial basis to ultimately be funded by TransLink full time.  This has occurred on numerous occasions since Route 725 and 748 were first introduced with Council's support in mid-2005 - the current Route 747 and 777 have also resulted from this process.

Key issues from our perspective are as follows:

- Short span of hours, with many bus services not operating into the evening.  This means key markets such as retail and office workers are not being provided with services that meet their basic needs, and it also means that light and heavy rail services are compromised by a lack of connectivity to the local bus network after the late afternoon.  Some parts of the bus network in the west of the city like Nerang are virtually inaccessible from the light rail network unless a passenger departs Broadbeach or Surfers Paradise before 1pm!

- Lack of weekend services on 3 routes (739, 746 and 749).  In our view, all 3 services should be operating 7 days a week given that there is no alternative service coverage for most of these routes on weekends.  This would make the Gold Coast unique in SEQ in that every public bus service would operate 7 days per week.

- Inadequate frequencies, with some services especially in the north of the city operating only 4 times per day on weekends and 8-9 times per day on weekdays.  We have previously proposed that the minimum service frequency and span of hours should be hourly from approximately 6am to 9pm on weekdays in order to provide a basic coverage function, with slightly less services on weekends.  We recognise that not all of the city's 60 bus services could or even should be operating at high frequencies, but there must be a "floor" on what constitutes the minimum for a bus service to meet the public need.  The current services are manifestly not fit for purpose.

- Specific instances of late running and "bunching" of buses reported on key arterial routes such as route 704 from Helensvale to Seaworld, which may require additional resources to fix such as on-road bus priority at intersections, additional services or timetable re-writes.

- Lack of bus stops located along major roads or at major trip attractors - for instance along Helensvale Road (Route 718), or along Southport-Burleigh Road at the Q Super Centre (Route 747) and at Southport Park (Route 731 and 747).

The city is going to have to cope with greater density in a fairly constrained foot-print in future.  Urban sprawl is not only an undesirable outcome and antithetical to good public transport, it is for the most part physically not achievable except in the far northern suburbs due to the natural setting of the city against the Hinterland and extensive wetland areas.

Improved public and active transport is going to become increasingly important for the Gold Coast in future years and the time to set the correct foundation is now.

Contacts:

Steven Jamieson
Gold Coast Region Spokesperson for RAIL Back On Track

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track http://backontrack.org


References:

Population growth highlights and trends, Queensland regions, 2015 edition:
http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/pop-growth-highlights-trends-reg-qld/pop-growth-highlights-trends-reg-qld-2015.pdf

TransLink Tracker quarterly report - October to December (Q2) 2015-2016
https://publications.qld.gov.au/dataset/translink-division-quarterly-reports/resource/d7568d69-25cc-4019-ad22-796cd6057b7d

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Twitter

Gold Coast Bulletin ‏@GCBulletin 16m

#Breaking #GoldCoast @MayorTomTate commits to extending light rail to @gcairport Full report to follow

[SurfRail]

Nothing new.  The city is already budgeting for around 10% of the capital cost of any future extensions, including Helensvale.

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Gold Coast Bulletin --> Business leaders call to fast track the (Gold) Coast's public transport system before building a ship terminal