Gold Coast City Council to spend more than $100m on road upgrades in June budget

A ROAD works package worth more than $100 million will be rolled out by the Gold Coast City Council from July 1. It’s been revealed what this the first post-Games budget will focus on.

A ROAD works package worth more than $100 million will be rolled out by the Gold Coast City Council from July 1.

Councillors met this morning for the first budget talks of the 2018-19 financial year, the first to be delivered post-Commonwealth Games.

Fixing gridlock on local roads will be the focus of this year’s council budget.

Today’s talks primarily centred around the council-controlled marketing and promotional entities, Surfers Paradise Alliance, Broadbeach Alliance and Connecting Southern Gold Coast.

But Mayor Tom Tate, fresh from a three-week European Holiday, revealed this year’s budget would focus on roads.

“We have done budget consultation throughout the city and the strong indication back was that everyone wants to forward-plan our transport infrastructure,” he said.

Traffic at Sundale Bridge Picture: Richard Gosling

“This year I will be looking at funding anything which is local roads and make sure the State Government is up with it so that they are going to do work on their infrastructure we can do it at the same time which means only one visit for each location.

“These are value for money solutions which let us get on with it.”

The Mayor of Gold Coast, Tom Tate (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

It comes just two weeks after a State MP took aim at the council over its feeder roads onto the M1, with Yawalpah Road at Pimpama being one of the slowest.

Cr Tate said he was hoping to secure the support of his colleagues to fund a $10 million widening of Sundale Bridge from four lanes to five, a project he described as a ‘no brainer’.

The mayor also confirmed that the council would aim to deliver a rates increase of CPI or below.