There is a growing community movement to block a proposal for a housing development on the site of the Karana Downs golf course. I have set up some simple questions to gauge community feelings. Please also feel free to email me with further comments.
I sent the following on 23 June 2009 either by email or by via their web site to each of Campbell Newman, the State Minister of Transport Rachel Nolan and the state member in whose area the incident occurred, Scott Emerson:
On my way into the University of Queensland today on my bicycle, the
driver of the 428 bus that arrived on campus at about 8:40 behaved in
a consistently intimidatory way, including driving right up behind me
to stop at bus stops on the way, and overtaking me on the last stretch
of Hawken Drive before UQ so close I could have reached out to touch
the bus (this last event when the road was wide, and there was no
oncoming traffic, so there was absolutely no excuse). A bus is a
dangerous weapon when used in this fashion. Sooner or later this kind
of behaviour is going to result in serious injury or a fatality.I have complained several times about the way bus drivers attempt to
push bikes off the roads to no effect.This time if I get no satisfactory response be assured that I will
launch a public campaign.
I received a reply from Campbell Newman, dated 16 July, addressing my concerns in detail. The bus driver concerned has been placed on a performance improvement plan, and this information has been used to improve driver training.
I am yet to hear from the other politicians. While Campbell Newman is the person most able to take action, it is disappointing that the others did not take the matter seriously enough at least to reply.
While I disagree with Campbell Newman on many policy issues, I would like to thank him for taking this issue seriously and taking remedial action.
Nonetheless the city’s overall approach to bicycle safety is inadequate: incidents like this are not purely a matter of driver training but also a consequence of mixing too many incomptible vehicles on the same roadway. While there are some excellent bikeways, once you are off them you have little option but to mix with either heavy traffic or pedestrians. It’s as if the city, wanting to learn from its lesson of neglecting motorway construction in the era when that was considered a good idea, is trying to remedy this oversight by focusing solely on the equivalent of motorways for bicycles. It’s all very well to have a clear run between far out of the city and the city centre, but having to mix with other traffic in city and suburban streets remains a serious problem.
If everyone who had the option to use a bike felt safe to do so, traffic would be signficantly reduced, reducing the need for more roads. We would have a healthier population, and local businesses would do better because the average person would shop locally more often, rather than waiting until a long enough shopping list had accumulated to justify taking the car to the mall.
Let’s keep working on th big picture: a city that’s fun and safe to live in, with healthy lifestyle options accessible to all, not just the adventurous few willing to take their lives in their hands every time they venture onto the streets.
I was pleasantly surprised last year when I heard that the Transition Towns idea had made it to Kenmore. We cannot wait for governments to act in a time of crisis, a time that requires a major transformation.
Much of the failure of governments to act on the need for transformation is a failure of imagination. Someone needs to lead the way by showing what can be done, even if on a smaller scale than a government-driven transformation.
Here I would like to quote Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
How major a transformation are we facing? The changes we will need to make over the next years and decades are as big as the changes since the nineteenth century, with its gas lit streets travelled by horse and buggy. The twentieth century changed all that with the development of commercial air travel and the car, with cheap fossil fuels driving not only transport but also the apparently marvelous clean form of energy, electricity.
But that era is fast drawing to a close, and we must be ready for a new era, or we will be left behind as surely as those who believed the horse and buggy was the way of the future in 1909.
This urgency is caused by a failure of imagination that has slowed the pace of change, until we are faced with an increasingly urgent task of coping with carbon emissions reductions, a task on which we are way behind.
Two key issues are converging to drive change rapidly: peak oil and climate change. 30 years after Henry Ford first mass-produced his Model-Ts, horses were still in wide use. That is the natural pace of large-scale change, and we must face up to the fact that this time, because we have been so slow to get started, it will have to be faster.
If we do not try to get ahead of the worldwide current of change, we will be swept away by it. Our fossil-fuel dependent economy will collapse; our coal exports increasingly falling out of favour.
The choice we are facing is as stark as it is real. Get rolled over, or get into the lead.
Let’s see how change plays out close to home as well as for the state as a whole.
Climate change threatens food supply; we know the general trend, but cannot predict precise changes in weather patterns. It is therefore crazy to destroy prime farmland with projects like the Traveston Crossing dam, and coal mines out to the west of us in Felton and the Darling Downs – even more so when the future demand for coal is becoming uncertain. Food supply is also threatened by high energy costs; farmers should be included in energy production through solar and wind farms on unproductive land, and second-generation biofuels production, that does not compete with food supply.
Travel will unavoidably become more expensive, especially with high-emissions technologies. There are two remedies for that in and near cities: improved electrified public transport to reduce the need to drive cars, and better placement of facilities and services to reduce the need to travel. Once you have everyone in electrified public transport, you can clean up the electricity supply. For Brisbane, the Greens propose a light rail system that would bring the city closer to the outer suburbs. We also propose two new solar thermal power plants for the state, as a first step to clean base-load power. Other obvious steps, back in Moggill, include local health facilities and more schools in the outer suburbs.
In an era of expensive energy, we may just score the advantage of rediscovering the concept of community, a neighbourhood where your kids go to school, you go to the doctor, you spend your leisure hours, you get to know your neighbours and the elderly need not be lonely.
What’s more, if we no longer had pure dormitory suburbs – and here I think of the ex-pineapple farms in Moggill – many more of us would work close to home. How good would that be?
In this new world, building roads like the Kenmore Bypass no longer makes sense: we will get around by public transport, and use our cars for leisure. How many people, in any case, like to drive their car in heavy traffic?
Another big source of traffic – and of unacceptable danger to children – is travel to and from school. The dangers of school drop-off zones is one of the most frequent complaints I hear. A comprehensive school bus system would not only take cars off the roads, but make our children a lot safer.
Back to health. There are many good arguments for large tertiary hospitals. You can’t build a team of top specialists unless they have enough cases to keep in practice. On the other hand, the increasing cost of moving people means that small local hospitals make sense. These smaller hospitals would cover emergencies and routine cases, with the big tertiary hospitals covering the more difficult cases. So we propose a small local hospital be built somewhere in this electorate.
The state Labor government has the balance wrong: they are moving the Royal Children’s Hospital to a smaller site, and have no plan for small local hospitals.
For the longer-term, we propose building on our world-class research to develop the clean energy technologies of the future that the rest of the world desperately wants. I’ve worked in top universities and research labs. The talent we have here is right up there. Why then do we allow great innovations in solar technologies to slip out of our grasp, to be commercialized in the US or China? Queensland is the sunshine state and, the state government tells is, the smart state. Why not put these two together and become the smart sunshine state?
One of the things you so often hear is that doing the right thing by the environment is all very well, but where do we find the money?
I have some ideas on that. To fund our little local hospital, let’s draw a line through the destruction of the Royal Children’s Hospital. We could build a pretty good local hospital for a fraction of the $2-billion saved.
To fund a transition to clean energy and to fund the great clean energy research we know we can do right here in Queensland, in our great universities, in the CSIRO right here in our own electorate, I’m eyeing an even bigger chunk of misallocated money. The state government is planning on spending over $30-billion on doubling our capacity to export coal by 2015. How crazy is that? Haven’t they heard there’s a worldwide movement to cap carbon emissions?
Let’s grab back as much as we can of the money that’s being allocated to crazy projects, projects based on a nineteenth century mindset, and use that money to build the economy of the future with real green jobs, jobs in delivering safe, clean, efficient public transport, energy-efficient homes, clean energy and communities we can all be proud to live in.
We don’t need the Kenmore Bypass. We don’t need the Traveston Crossing Dam. We don’t need to redouble our efforts to export coal. We do need to gear our economy, our lifestyle, our way of doing business for the future.
The smart sunshine state. That’s what the Greens stand for.
It is quite bizarre that you can get a TransLink ticket from Nambour to the city, but not from Karana Downs.
Just in case it’s not obvious how bizarre this is, here is a map showing how far Nambour out is:
View Larger Map
And here’s a map to the same scale showing how far out Karana Downs is:
View Larger Map
The city and state governments have seriously dropped the ball on this one.
The Greens plan for Karana Downs is to extend the city Buz network to the area, with connection to the existing 444 service that currently goes out towards Moggill. In the longer term, once light rail is in place, we will provide a feeder service to light rail.
Karana Downs may be a relatively recent addition to Brisbane, but the public transport network is ultimately a state responsibililty and includes many cities and towns that are not part of Brisbane. How hard can it be to get this right?
Another critical area of need in Karana Downs is a High School, which has long been talked about, but nothing has happened. A high school will relieve considerable pressure on the roads as well as building the local community.
light rail routes (click for bigger version)
Queensland Greens propose a city-wide light rail system to supplement the existing public transport network. Light rail has several benefits. It is quicker and cheaper to put in than heavy rail. Routes along which it runs become a focus for development, especially shops and businesses. By contrast, bus routes can easily change, reducing the certainty needed for planning for future business. Although parts of the system may run like a tram through city streets, we envisage that most of the network will be separated from roads. Some sections may run above the existing rail network in areas of high density.
In Moggill, we propose to take the light rail system through Kenmore South to Pullenvale and Moggill, with a possible extension across the river to meet the Ipswich line, depending on local consultation about a river crossing.
The alignment of the route is initially proposed to follow the Kenmore Bypass corridor, since this area was originally designated as a light rail corridor.
The actual route will be investigated taking into account environmental impacts and noise.
Before we would start drawing lines on a map, we would have an extensive community consultation to determine the ideal routing of the line, including options other than the Kenmore Bypass corridor.
This plan is part of the Greens commitment to helping you get around, without being stuck in heavy traffic. It is also part of the Greens commitment to real green jobs. It is also part of involving you in planning your own community, so let me know if you have comments or ideas of your own.
Please also remember the survey where light rail is one of the options on which to express your opinion.
The following survey arises out of many opinions I’ve heard while talking to people. There’s a limit to how many people I can talk to, so please let me know by taking the survey what you think.
You can also email me if you want to talk further.
The survey is anonymous with some checks to prevent duplicate submissions.
As always, I value community opinion.
Thanks for all the responses. Watch this space for follow-ups
Why is the Kenmore bypass such a divisive issue in Moggill? Why is finding your way around such a problem for so many people?
We can divide the problem into four parts:
But first, I’d like to explain why I became involved in the issue.
We are facing an era of great change. Oil prices have only tumbled from record highs because of an economic meltdown evoking memories of 1929. Dealing with climate change will force us reduce emissions. Both forces point to reduced role for the private car. Of course, some people will still have to use cars by the nature of their work, but many others in the new energy economy will mainly use cars for recreation, and use bicycles or public transport for routine travel.
Even without these changes, though, there are good reasons to look at alternatives to building a road as a way of solving congestion. In cities like LA, where building roads was the only solution under consideration, the result is a city full of freeways and traffic gridlock. In cities such as London, Paris, Seoul and Bogota where the approach was to provide alternatives to cars, most people don’t drive, and do not miss sitting in traffic.
Let’s now go on to more detail of the problems and how I propose we tackle the problem.
Aside the problem of heavy traffic, Moggill Road has patches that are poorly designed and unsuited to their purpose. A few examples:
It is questionable whether reducing traffic alone would fix these problems; some may even be worse if it were possible to travel faster.
So these problems need to be fixed whether a bypass is put in or not. Unfortunately the bypass appears to be used as an excuse for inaction.
Too many people having to be travel can be addressed by putting more facilities and services into the outer suburbs. Kenmore High School is bursting at the seams, with many students from the outer suburbs. If we put in a new high school in Bellbowrie, we would not only cut a lot of traffic, but help build the community. If you have a medical emergency in the outer suburbs, where do you go? You have no options that do not require a long trip. A 24/7 emergency centre that could be upgraded to a full hospital would solve that problem. Add in services and entertainment, and the need for travel would be greatly reduced.
Much of the problem arises from new houses that were put in at Moggill without requiring that the developer include local services. The notion that you can build a pure dormitory suburb in an era of climate change and declining oil supply is crazy.
Much of the demand for more roads therefore arises from poor planning, a problem that must be addressed whether a new road is built or not.
Because of the shortage of services in the outer suburbs and the poor state of public transport, much of the travel through Moggill is in the same direction. Inevitably, many residents of the outer suburbs who have children head towards Kenmore because that end of the electorate is where most of the schools are. Most residents head in towards the city for work. Someone I met in Bellbowrie leaves home at 6am to be in time to find parking in Taringa, the nearest park and ride train station from the Moggill side of the river.
Public transport in Moggill is abysmal. I’ve had students as close in as Kenmore telling me it takes them an hour to get to Uni by bus. That’s not an alternative, that’s punishment. The big problem with buses on Moggill Road is that they are stuck in the same traffic as the cars. There also is no option to catch the train – unless you are willing to drive in to Taringa or Toowong to find parking.
The problem of no alternatives can be addressed in four ways:
Why are some people so upset about the proposed bypass? Because it’s not a little road, suited to a residential suburb. It’s part of a plan to construct a large freeway, many times the length of the initial plan, that will not only cut the suburb in half, but turn it into a noisy urban environment.
Here’s a picture extracted from the Department of Main Roads description of the Moggill Pocket Arterial Road/Moggill-Warrego Highway Connection.
The little red piece on the right is the Kenmore bypass; the blue part on the left is the longer-term plan. The actual map of the complete route is far too big to display on any meaningful scale on a web page. This road will start from the Centenary Highway at Fig Tree Pocket and end at the Warrego Highway at North Tivoli, cutting through Kenmore, Pullenvale, Anstead and Karalee.
So, won’t this new road (the little bit that’s already planned, the Kenmore bypass), solve all these problems? If history is a guide, no. There is a great highway down to the Gold Coast. Developers spotted the easy commute to Brisbane, and put in new housing. That great “easy commute” highway is now a parking lot at busy times.
Putting in this new road will also not address the lack of community development of the outer suburbs, or the over-crowding of Kenmore High School. It will also not address the dangerous school drop-off zones and other issues identified as problems with the road. These things need to be fixed anyway, bypass or not.
It also won’t address the problem of dependence on cars.
Of course some people do need to use their cars, a need that doesn’t go away even in cities with great public transport. But if we can reduce traffic by at least as much as in the school holidays, there is no need for a bypass. And good planning can take even more cars than that off the roads.
What’s more, this is the wrong time to be planning for an increase in use of cars. Oil supply is starting to look tenuous. Climate change not only demands that we use cars far less but that energy will become more expensive.
We would be much better off spending the money that would go towards the Kenmore Bypass and the other roads infrastructure around Brisbane that collectively adds up to many billions of dollars on better public transport, a cross-river connection to the Ipswich line, school buses and safe bike paths.
Of these solutions, school buses could be brought in fastest, and would go a long way towards reducing the dangers of school drop-off zones. As a guide to how soon a crossing to the Ipswich line could be put in, the Green Bridge (now Eleanor Schonell Bridge) at the University of Queensland, carrying buses, bicycles and pedestrians, was completed in six months. Light rail would take longer, but the quicker measures would considerably ease congestion. Constructing a new school and adding local services and entertainment would be an ongoing project. Completion of the Kenmore Bypass, by contrast, would take at least four years, during which time none of the other problems would be solved – and some would still not be solved once it was built.
So not only is the Kenmore Bypass a poor fit to the times, a poor fit to the community and unlikely to solve the problem in the long term, but other solutions could be put in place faster.
