Wheels of progress move at last

[ozbob]

From the Courier Mail Editorial click here!

Wheels of progress move at last

Wheels of progress move at last
Article from: The Courier-Mail

February 22, 2010 11:00pm

THE CLEM7 tunnel linking Bowen Hills and Woolloongabba will open next month, marking the completion of one of the largest and most complex engineering tasks undertaken in Queensland.

It will also show up the state Labor Government, which had little to do with the tunnel's construction other than to delay it through insisting that no cars were funnelled into it to boost toll revenue.

The tunnel opening will reaffirm that it is the Brisbane City Council that began the heavy lifting when it came to repairing and upgrading the city's overstretched transport network well before George Street became interested. After doing little in the way of improvements for several years, the State Government suddenly burst into a frenzy of activity, first building Brisbane's busways then duplicating the Gateway Bridge and committing to build the Airport Link road. For all this, however, the single most important addition to the city's public transport network, a second cross-river rail link, remains at the planning stage.

Last year, Queensland Auditor-General Glenn Poole gave some insight into why transport planning in southeast Queensland is in such a state. Despite the development of various plans by Transport and Main Roads as well as other government departments, Mr Poole found that few of them integrated or aligned with each other. Indeed, he discovered that the State's transport bureaucrats had allowed a key planning strategy to lapse for four years in direct breach of Government legislation. Moreover, the last integrated regional transport plan for southeast Queensland was drawn up in 1997, 13 years ago. An updated plan, Connecting SEQ 2031, was supposed to have been released last year. Two years ago, senior Queensland Transport bureaucrat Mark Cridland described the plan as "our flagship project" for 2008-09. Yet it will not emerge from the department until the middle of this year at the earliest. In the meantime, land use strategies that the transport plan was supposed to inform, such as the South East Queensland Regional Plan, have already passed into law.

Clearly, there is a lot of scope for improvement in the State's transport planning and, to be fair, the Government has acknowledged as much. We are told the days of the Transport and Main Roads departments operating separately in their own closed-off silos, blind to the necessity of working together, are gone. We have been assured that both organisations have undergone cultural change and that they are working to ensure improvements to both road and rail will be part of the blueprint to tackle southeast Queensland congestion. However, the region's motorists and public transport commuters are paying a heavy price for the inaction and bad planing of previous years. With the Federal Government now standing ready to fund large chunks of new transport infrastructure in the nation's major cities, it will be up to the State's transport planners to produce strategies that will stand up to scrutiny and attract support.

[ozbob]

.. State's transport planners to produce strategies that will stand up to scrutiny and attract support ...

Let us justly hope they don't let the side down once again ..

[ozbob]

... however, the single most important addition to the city's public transport network, a second cross-river rail link, remains at the planning stage ...

Hallelujah!

[ozbob]

Interesting editorial.  Now and again the CM gets it right!

[Jon Bryant]

Except the bit about the tunnel being a good piece of transport planning.  It will encourage the traffic that will eventually congest it.  Useless.  Absolutely useless and will set transport planning back 40 years in this city. 

[ozbob]

I was emphasising the bits I quoted.  Planning has been abysmal and the Cross River Rail must be a priority. In that they are spot on ...

[Jon Bryant]

On that they were indeed spot on. I am sure most punters who read it would come away thinking "State Govt needs to build more roads" though.