In her office at the Nambour headquarters of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, Cr Vivien Griffin pulls out the super-duper plan for the Mooloolah River Interchange and by the look in her eyes asks silently, ‘What do you think of that?’.
The planned Mooloolah River interchange
It’s then that you realise that projected population growth is sending people loopy, including road planners.
It’s enough to send any sane driver into a spin. On paper, it’s like curled strings of spaghetti have been spilled on the map, the spaghetti signifying multi-lanes of concrete and bitumen which will cover a huge area and mean the demolition of many family homes.
And once it’s built you’ll never see granny again as she drives off into its motoring maze to who knows where.
So this is the Sunshine Coast’s future where the big spending is presently focused on bigger and more complex road systems rather than public transport – all to accommodate more and more people beyond its comfortable capacity.
So when you get onto these roads in 2030 or even earlier, where do you go – just down the freeway to get lost in the complexities of the next challenging interchange and funnel off into the next delightful bit of urban infill.
But back to Cr Griffin. At the face of it a serious woman, but one suspects her of having a wry sense of humour.
“Imagine the billions of dollars that would go into that – it’s a multi-modal transport corridor,” said the councillor as she waved the copy of the planned motorway upgrade.
“This is where the Department of Transport and Main Roads spends the money, drawing this stuff up – they don’t spend their money on getting the public transport improved.”
Cr Griffin holds an important portfolio on the new Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
The portfolio is ‘Integrated Transport’ – one Cr Griffins describes as having two elements; it is ‘integrated with land use but also it means that each mode is integrated with the other’.
“I asked the mayor for this portfolio immediately after the council was elected because I think that if we do not have a sustainable transport outcome, then we will never achieve a sustainable Sunshine Coast,” she said.
“There are other important elements to long-term sustainability but this is a core one.”
At the same time as showing the aerial map/overlay artwork composite of the multi-looped Mooloolah River Interchange, Cr Griffin also showed a page of the Sunshine Motorway 32 Study’ put together by global transport consultants Connell Wagner.
“Their brief was to come up with a motorway that could deal with the doubling of the Sunshine Cost population by 2032. These figures had been supplied by the Planning Information and Forecasting Unit (PIFU). Transport modelling done as part of the study predicted traffic volumes would increase in some areas to more than three times the level.
Connell Wagner reported back that ‘to cater for projected 2032 traffic volumes, the motorway would need to be planned for 10 lanes’ [in one of its sections].
They added a rider: ‘A 10-lane motorway is not practical. As more lanes are added, the spacing between interchanges needs to increase and it would not be possible to accommodate many of the proposed and existing interchange locations’.
“The engineers are saying ‘we actually can’t build it’,” said Cr Griffin.
“It would be a hideous choice, anyway.”
“Then what they say is ‘what we need to do, because we can’t do that, is shift to more effective public transport, increased vehicle occupancy, and land-use planning’,” said Cr Griffin.
“Do I see any evidence that they’re tackling these issues? The answer is ‘No’.”
So, it would seem that the engineers can not deliver a road system on this part of the Sunshine Coast to adequately cope with the State Government’s projected population figure which is in the ballpark of the South East Queensland Regional Plan.
But perhaps the prospect of ‘Peak Oil’ and the attendant escalation of fuel prices will drive drivers off the roads and on to public transport and save the day. We just need more money redirected towards installing those public transport systems.
Meanwhile, the SM2032 Study team, instead, has decided to provide a detailed planning strategy for a four to eight lane motorway that will cater for traffic demands to at least 2021 and provide strategic direction for motorway development through to 2032.
Fortunately, the consultants have also been looking at other transport solutions which include more effective public transport, increased vehicle occupancy and land-use planning to reduce road-based travel demand (transit systems).
This is where Cr Griffin has a particular interest. She believes that with the prospect of Peak Oil there will be rapid advances in public transport systems.
However, other advances of technology in ‘green mobility’, which include hybrid-fuels or hybrid vehicles, will still mean cars on the roads creating congestion.
“If you still have private motor vehicles, no matter how eco-efficient they are, there’s still a need to build more roads, and that’s not long-term sustainable,” said Cr Griffin.
“It will lead to loss of habitat and spending massive amounts of money on capital infrastructure, creating gridlocks, incurring more maintenance costs.
“While it’s important to look at those fuel options it is still important to look at public transport as a key element in the equation.
“Ultimately, people understand that their choices have prices. However, we must focus on delivering a great alternative to the private motor vehicle – to deliver a quality, fast, frequent, reliable, good-looking public transport service.
“We’re incredibly focused on working up the public transport options now. We have to make sure we are not approving residential or economic development without clearly having a delivery of public transport. It has to be a major player in our planning.
“With the council amalgamations we now have a much larger area to cover and have an opportunity at a regional scale to deliver good transport outcomes. We will be neglectful to our community if we don’t seize that opportunity.
“A key element is that we build into our land use planning, from the beginning, certain parameters to encourage public transport use such as designing in a ‘green link’ connector to major employment centres.”
But Cr Griffin did point out that one of the issues they had with State Government was getting agreement to deliver infrastructure at the right time and sequence, when the residential development, or indeed something like the Kawana University Hospital comes on line.
She said there was the danger of creating a residential ghetto if you get to a situation where you say ‘Ooops! Now we need to deliver the public transport’.
Taking her ‘transport’ cap off, Cr Griffin said: “As a council we are saying you can have a healthy economy without relying on infinite population growth, and there are plenty of documents around to support that.
“Our economic advantage here is as a lifestyle region. We think we have a competitive economic advantage through rural food production as well.
“I also have no doubt that regions do not have an exponential capacity to sustain population growth into the future – that’s a nonsensical proposition. Physically you would have to be delivering a Shanghai-type future with lots of 80-storey residential towers.
“You have to be honest. You have to be wise in acknowledging that there is this thing called ‘sustainable carrying capacity’.”
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