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Last Thursday, the Federal Government announced they were withdrawing funding from the Caloundra Transport Corridor project, citing that there are projects don’t demonstrate merit and meet the Australian Government’s investment priorities. This might seem like a blow to Caloundra, but maybe it’s the prompt we needed to have one last hard look at this project. 

A common catch cry at the Sunshine Coast, is that we don’t want to be like the Gold Coast. I’ve just spent a few days in South Port and I’m wondering what it is about the Gold Coast that offends us. The foreshore areas with bike paths, coffee shops and parklands are lovely. Precincts around the light rail stations are great places to walk and filled with interesting little shops and restaurants. The skyscrapers don’t stand out in my experience, and their suburbs don’t seem vastly different to ours. 

The thing that I didn’t like about the Gold Coast, was the roads. There’s a busy highway between the town and the beach! It’s wide, noisy, smelly and scary. Many roads through town centres are also terribly wide. It’s hard to enjoy walking around so much asphalt, and you spend a whole lot of time standing at corners waiting to crossroads. 

This seems to be a main point of difference between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. Many roads at the Gold Coast, dominate the surrounding land areas, and take the joy out of moving. In contrast, many sections of the Sunshine Coast have been spared this asphalt domination.  In areas like Coolum, our Council has even invested in narrowing roads and slowing them down to improve liveability of the precinct. 

Caloundra, and many of the small villages around the coast have a particular advantage on this front. These towns weren’t planned around everyone moving in cars. They assumed people would need to be able to walk places. As a result, we have schools, sports facilities, and a bushland park, all within walking distance from the CBD.  

However, all that doesn’t address the issue that prompted the Caloundra Transport Corridor project. The road congestion at the Nicklin Way and Caloundra Road roundabout disrupts vehicle travel to Caloundra and makes a frightening entry for anyone coming by bike or the bus stops near the police station and soccer fields.

There are limited ways into Caloundra and people are forced to choose between Caloundra Rd or the northern suburb of Dicky Beach. Providing another access to Caloundra makes sense. Council and TMR flagged future connections through Ben Bennett Park (near the powerline easement) and at Queen St near the golf course, several years ago.  This is an appropriate response, provided neither of the new road connections are overdesigned to encourage an unmanageable flood of vehicles into one area. Contrary to what Council’s claims, concentrating 20,000 vehicles through the Oval Ave precinct each day, will not improve safety for active transport and particularly the many school children who will need to cross this road.

The current project that is planned for Caloundra provides for an incomprehensible and implausible amount of cars in our CBD. It rightly assumes that more people will want to live in this area. However, it wrongly assumes that these people will use their cars to do most of their daily trips. The vision for this area should be that we protect our green spaces at all cost, improve our walking and cycling facilities, improve our public transport and welcome more people into this pocket of the coast where transport is affordable and sustainable. At the same time, we should carefully plan to improve vehicle access into Caloundra, ensuring we don’t overdo it!