Coomera Connector’s greatest value will be in providing second major crossing point on Coomera River
There’s a crucial flaw in the Gold Coast’s road network that’s being overlooked – and it’s the most compelling reason we need the Coomera Connector sooner rather than later, writes Keith Woods.
Future Gold Coast
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THE Sanctuary Cove Marine Village and the Coomera Waters Tavern are two popular spots on the northern Gold Coast.
Both offer the option of dining with pleasant water views.
As the crow flies, they are exactly 1km apart. But to drive from one to the other you need to travel 17km of road, including the M1. Assuming there is no traffic, it will still take you more than 20 minutes.
This is the crux of the traffic problem on the northern Gold Coast.
Put simply, east of the M1 and the parallel Dreamworld Parkway, there is no other crossing point on the Coomera River.
Anybody travelling to points on the Gold Coast south of this waterway, whether they be coming from Brisbane, Pimpama or Coomera, is likely to use this choke point. The next nearest crossing is 3.5km further west, at the flood-prone John Muntz Bridge.
This is the real reason the Coomera Connector is so important.
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Most of the discussion surrounding this long-overdue road has been around the needs of commuters to Brisbane. But that is, to some extent, to miss the point. Its real value will be to give locals the ability to more easily move around the northern Gold Coast without accessing the motorway, or passing through one of its exits.
As Urbis Gold Coast director Matthew Schneider told the Gold Coast Bulletin this week, one of the biggest problems with the M1 is that it is being used as a local road. In the case of areas such as Coomera and Pimpama, this is because no equivalent local road exists.
“Much of the congestion on the M1 during peak hours is not people commuting between the Gold Coast and Brisbane,” he said.
“It’s actually local Gold Coasters trying to go about their day and needing to commute from east to west across the motorway, or hopping on the M1 from one exit to the next to commute around the city.
“It is this local traffic that we need to get off the M1 and on to the M2.”
The Coomera Connector would thus be less of a second M1, and more of a northern Robina Parkway or Southport-Burleigh Road.
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The river is not the only choke point. There is also the east-west problem, with the M1 as a great dividing wall.
Unless they travel south to the start of the Smith St motorway at Gaven, residents of Oxenford and Pacific Pines cannot realistically go anywhere else on the Gold Coast without passing through some of the motorway’s busiest junctions. In many cases, they will join the motorway itself. Anything else is the “long way around”.
No wonder, despite the vast amount of money being poured into upgrading exits, a report released by Infrastructure Australia on August 13 predicted congestion on the northern part of the M1 will continue to get significantly worse.
If you think traffic is bad on the motorway now, the Urban Transport Crowding and Congestion report makes unhappy reading, predicting an extra 31,000 vehicles will soon travel in each direction at peak periods.
A graphic produced by the report’s authors starkly highlights the problem, showing a continuous sea of red, representing “high” traffic volume, is expected in both directions north of Nerang by 2031. In contrast, the 2016 version shows little such congestion.
It makes the case for the Coomera Connector painfully obvious. Of all the projects highlighted in the Bulletin’s Future Gold Coast series, the evidence is clear that this is the most urgent.
Yet the Department of Transport and Main Roads is in no hurry, saying the project is “in the preliminary phase of the project life cycle” and that “timelines for construction have not yet been identified”.
While Transport Minister Mark Bailey denies it will be decades before the road is built, on the current trajectory, it is far from clear that it would be open before the gridlock predicted by the Infrastructure Australia report.
If it’s not, there may be only one option left for residents living north of the Coomera River. Buy a boat.