Flashback: The 1988 traffic plan to put a tunnel under the Gold Coast Highway in Surfers Paradise

SICK of being stuck in traffic on the M1 and Gold Coast Highway? A tunnel under Surfers Paradise and a city ring road were floating as solutions to the city’s traffic congestion.

SICK of being stuck in traffic on the M1 and Gold Coast Highway?

It’s one of the questions Gold Coasters have been asking themselves for years as more people moved to the city and extra cars began travelling the motorways.

This week the driving public got a taste of how traffic will flow during the Commonwealth Games, with speed limits lowered on the M1.

Thursday’s first day of altered traffic speeds produced the long-feared congestion and even the occasional crash.

The M1 this week Picture Glenn Hampson

Flashback to 30 years ago when Gold Coast city leaders considered a radical plan to build a tunnel under Surfers Paradise.

Tunnel vision was nothing new for the city — a year earlier there was talk of allowing development on South Stradbroke Island, which could have led to a tunnel under the Broadwater.

That plan, put forward by the Gold Coast Waterways Authority, drew a famously salty response from Alderman Keith Thompson.

Surfers Paradise 1988: There was a plan to put a tunnel under the Gold Coast Highway.

“Soon we’ll have the National Party headquarters on the 57th floor of a building on Wavebreak Island, an underwater tunnel and a rocket launching site,” he said.

“And to want a golf course on Stradbroke Island is pathetic.’’

But months later the idea of a tunnel through the Glitter Strip was seriously proposed.

In February 1988 a Queensland-based consortium answered a call from the Gold Coast City Council, then led by Mayor Denis Pie, and unveiled an underground tunnel in Surfers Paradise.

Gold Coast Mayor Denis Pie

The consortium, Gold Coast Plaza Pty Ltd, was led by chairman Geoff Burchill and included businessman Warren Sinclair, the Kern Corporation and the MUR Group.

The $65 million proposal would have seen a three-lane tunnel built between Elkhorn Ave and Hanlan St, with a landscaped public plaza built over the top.

The company claimed the project would come at no cost to either the council or the Ahern Government.

However, they did ask that the company control the land under which the tunnel was built.

According to plans showed to the media in 1988, southbound traffic coming from Southport would enter the tunnel on the Gold Coast Highway near View St and exit near Hanlan St.

Geoff Burchill led the consortium behind the plan for a tunnel

Northbound traffic would have been unaffected and continue to travel along Ferny Ave.

The developer also planned a “Bicentenary Plaza, a Town Square and an All National Flag Court with an amphitheatre and stage” be built around Cavill Ave mall

The proposal drew immediate criticism from some quarters, including the Gold Coast division of the Institute of Architects and an environmental group which instead proposed a ring road.

Group chairman, Peter Clarke told media the group believed the plan for a tunnel underneath the Gold Coast Highway would have limited community benefits.

“The solution proposed by the group has received substantial support from the council’s town planning department as a long-term solution to traffic problems,’’ he said.

The tunnel project never got off the ground.

“The Gold Coast Highway tunnel plan proposes only three southbound lanes, which is the same as at present.

“The proposal decimates highway frontage between View and Elkhorn avenues and between Hanlan and Trickett streets, where the tunnel ramps will eat up the highway.’’

The project never went ahead, while another proposal put forward in 2004 met a similar fate.