June 2023
Have your say: take the survey
In May, Council finally released the Chelmer-Indooroopilly River Crossing Pre-Feasibility Study. What was released is a key findings report only. It’s taken several months of pressure to get Council to come clean about the report which was actually finalised in July 2022.
Recently you would have received a flyer from the Lord Mayor about the Chelmer to Indooroopilly River Crossing Pre-feasibility Study. Despite what can only be described as a flimsy study with very limited public consultation, the Lord Mayor has announced another bridge is coming. As per usual, his face was all over the flyer. Perhaps he will name it after himself.
The Lord Mayor’s solution is to build another bridge with all traffic forced to use the existing congested and constrained Coonan Road corridor via an overpass over the Indooroopilly Rail Station and ask another level of government to fork out for the $1.3 billion price tag. It is a tricky plan from a Lord Mayor who only wants to play politics not find real solutions to the congestion problems our community faces every day. Almost immediately, the State Government has ruled out funding a new bridge saying it is a Council responsibility.
Most concerningly, some of the key study findings presented to you by Council are very misleading.
For example, Council advises that the majority of trips (about 75%) are “generated locally.” Council’s “local” metric is either that a trip starts or finishes in suburbs close to the Bridge. For example, a trip from Ipswich to Indooroopilly or North Lakes to Corinda is considered a “local trip” by Council. That’s not local by anyone’s reasonable understanding.
While Council presents the outcome of consultation as 85% of people in favour of “infrastructure improvements to the district and river crossing,” this does not give a good picture of what people wrote in the “other box” relied on for this metric. See pie chart.
Worse still, what the Lord Mayor and Council didn’t tell you in their glossy flyer is that the Study forecasts traffic could increase by up to 48% with a new bridge and it would be overcapacity within 10 years. My greatest concern is that the adverse impacts of thousands of extra vehicles a day, including trucks, using Honour Ave or Oxley Rd will irrevocably change and damage the amenity and safety of our community. In the original scoping study, the precursor to this new report, Council acknowledges that thousands of trucks would be able to use the new bridge as there would be no load limits. The new report conveniently leaves any reference to heavy vehicles out. But, given the proximity of the Brisbane Markets, the Rocklea industrial area and access via Sherwood and Oxley Rd or Honour Ave there would be nothing stopping trucks from heading north across the Bridge.
What is clear from the Study is that local residents want action on congestion via better public and active transport options as well as local intersection improvements around the Bridge.
I think the Lord Mayor should take a step back from the flawed, presumptive decision to duplicate the Walter Taylor Bridge. We need action now, practical projects that won’t make the problem worse. The Lord Mayor might be out of them but I know our community is not! Let’s come up with some solutions ourselves. I’ve put together a short survey to seek residents’ views about a bridge upgrade, traffic safety improvements, better public and active transport or any other out of the box ideas. Click here to take the survey and let me know your views.
March 2023
It’s been three years since Council announced a pre-feasibility study regarding duplication of the Walter Taylor Bridge and over a year since public consultation closed. Yesterday, 21 March 2023, I asked the Lord Mayor a question in Question Time about the status of the study including:
- the outcome of the public consultation: and
- the recommendations of the pre-feasibility study.
Check out the answer below. It might surprise you. Instead of answering the Question as he is required to do, and would be really useful information for our community, Adrian Schrinner attacked me, waffled on about lots of other things, like the failed North West Transit plan, and claimed to be working with the State Government.
It is really clear that Council is keeping this information secret for some reason – they actually promised to release it in mid-2022 but have not. This promise was made publicly and is on the BCC website and in the flyers about the study Council released to the community. Keep this in mind when you hear the Lord Mayor deliberately imply I am being dishonest by simply asking a question we all want to know the answer to. Seriously? Holding Council to account and asking for transparency about projects in our area on your behalf is my job and should not result in personal attacks.
The only people who aren’t being upfront with our community are the Lord Mayor and the Council he controls.
I think this gives you some idea of what Adrian Schrinner is really like. He could have answered the question openly, he could have said he would get back to me, he could have said he would release the consultation feedback and the pre-feasibility study. None of that occurred.
This is an issue people ask me about every week and I am seeking this information for our community but the Lord Mayor is refusing to share it. He also falsely claims that he does not know my views, which are clearly on the record to him and publicly.
My position on a second bridge is clear. Why here? What’s the long-term plan? What other options have been considered in the western suburbs? Most importantly what implications for Oxley Rd and surrounding local streets from the inevitable increase in are there for the increased traffic, including making Oxley Rd a freight route? Read my position here.
I even wrote to the Lord Mayor back in 2021 outlining my position — you can read that letter here. Yet, he says he doesn’t know my views?
You can see from his reply he is only interested in playing party politics with the State Member on this issue, even though it is a Council responsibility. Read his reply here.
All I did was ask a simple question. What was the outcome of the community consultation and what were the recommendations of the pre-feasibility study? Not impolite or difficult questions. I will keep at it until our community gets the answers it deserves.