Shock traffic count: Coomera Connector will double amount of cars in Gold Coast suburb
Council officers believe the Coomera Connector will double traffic on a congested arterial road, creating gridlock in a northern suburb.
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THE Coomera Connector is to be linked to a congested northern arterial road which will double the local traffic, creating gridlock in a northern suburb.
The Bulletin can reveal council has been monitoring vehicle loads on Helensvale Road, which now reach between 5000 to 6000 car movements each day.
Worse still, council knows building the Connector will require a multi-million upgrade to this key link road — but the State Government is yet to say if that part of the transport upgrade is in scope.
Helensvale Road reduces from four lanes to a single carriageway once it passes by the State secondary school and heads east towards the planned route for the Connector.
Helensvale-based councillor William Owen-Jones, after a report in The Bulletin today, said Theodore MP Mark Boothman had correctly called out the State on its poor form on community consultation.
Mr Boothman accused the government of consulting on a Hope Island Road link while all the time determined to proceed with Helensvale Road.
Cr Owen-Jones in a Facebook post to residents wrote: “What is the point. To date, city councillors have been unable to obtain from the State any more detail on the design then has been made available to the public.”
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A request for minutes of technical working groups and project partnering meetings was “taken on notice” by the Department in November last year.
“It’s a request that remains unanswered by the State,” Cr Owen-Jones said.
“At present, Helensvale Road currently has approximately 5000 to 6000 car movements per day on it — traffic that currently travels past the largest State High School on the Gold Coast.
“It is expected by city officers that an interchange would see at least a doubling of this volume to the east of the railway lines.”
Council has long term plans to upgrade the eastern section from Broadwater Avenue to Monterey Keys but it was not included on the current five year capital works program.
“With the need to duplicate multiple bridges, as part of any program that would see four lanes constructed along Helensvale Road, it is a project that would run into the tens of millions for ratepayers,” Cr Owen-Jones wrote.
The current position by the government was costs to the city’s infrastructure networks were “out of scope of the project envelope”.
Cr Owen-Jones described the presentation by TMR to council in November as “underwhelming”, prompting a call by councillors to invite Transport Minister Mark Bailey down for a briefing.
“Hopefully the Minister is able to provide better details to councillors on what will be the single largest roads project to be undertaken by TMR over the next four years,” he said.
GOVERNMENT ACCUSED OF MISLEADING RESIDENTS
THE State Government is being accused of misleading residents about what key roads will link up in the first stage of the planned $1.53 billion Coomera Connector.
Theodore MP Mark Boothman has asked Transport Minister Mark Bailey to “direct the department” to re-evaluate its plan to dump traffic from the second M1 on to busy Helensvale Road.
In his response, Mr Bailey said the Transport and Main Roads (TMR) department was sticking with its plans to use Helensvale Road and had ruled out another option of connecting with Hope Island Road.
Mr Boothman told the Bulletin: “The community consultation was in November 2019. Yet according to the answer to my question they had no intention of actually putting a connection on Hope Island Road. So what is the point of putting it on their map?
“A lot of residents are obviously concerned about the traffic on Helensvale Road, especially around school times at the moment.
“They are fearful this new connection will place additional traffic, which will cause additional congestion. Why mislead the general public that there is a potential connection at Hope Island Road which would be more prudent?
“Obviously, they knew this beforehand that there would be potentially 100 properties acquired and it would cause flooding issues (at Hope Island).”
In a council briefing in November, transport bureaucrats advised councillors concerned about funding for the Helensvale Road upgrade that dual laning of the connector road was still being worked out.
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The six-lane highway is expected to take up to 60,000 vehicles a day off the congested Pacific Motorway, preventing it from reaching gridlock around Helensvale.
Mr Bailey said the former Newman Government had cut the Coomera Connector from planning documents “after not one new dollar was invested in light rail, the M1 or heavy rail on the Gold Coast” by the LNP.
As part of the preliminary evaluation phase of the project, interchange locations were assessed from both engineering and design, and traffic modelling points of view, he said.
“An interchange at Helensvale Road was accounted for when the project corridor from Coomera to Nerang was formally confirmed in the Queensland Government Gazette in March 2016,” Mr Bailey said.
“Based on community feedback about the desire for an interchange to be provided at Hope Island Road, the Department of Transport and Main Roads has since undertaken investigations to determine the feasibility of the connection.
“Analysis confirmed Helensvale Road as the most suitable location, avoiding in excess of 100 property resumptions at Hope Island and Monterey Keys.”
Mr Bailey said the first stage of the project was not expected to cause significant change to traffic volumes on Helensvale Road to the west of the new highway.
He said TMR was working closely with council on the planning of associated upgrades that may be required to the local road network, including Helensvale Road.
The council has planned for future upgrades of Helensvale Road, to the east of the Coomera Connector, “to cater for the anticipated increase in traffic on this council road link”.
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