Gold Coast traffic and population growth fears could be solved by forward road planning says Mark McCrindle

GOLD Coasters are pushing back against people migrating to the city for it’s incredible lifestyle, warning that the traffic is getting worse. But social researcher Mark McCrindle reveals the fix.

THE reality is, Queensland is better than most others states in terms of their town planning.

We look at information across the state as well as federal data and Queensland has a well-developed population modelling approach.

More importantly there are infrastructure plans to go with it.

NSW has started to get there after they did not do it for many years and Sydney got caught short.

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Social researcher Mark McCrindle

It is great to see the Gold Coast’s growth is on in earnest and there is an integrated infrastructure plan to go with this.

When we see the population push back on growth it can become a political issue — it is not that people necessarily have an issue with migration, because Australians have been showed to be consistently supportive of its, but it is that those people are personally experiencing the pain of growth happening faster than planning.

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People don’t like traffic. Photo by Richard Gosling

It is important to have the infrastructure plans to accommodate the growth.

If this plays out then it prevents a push against migration.

For our society and supports the city’s lifestyle, having such an infrastructure plan is great and this is an area the coast is doing well in.

The other thing the Gold Coast is doing better than most is that it is not just thinking about public transport alone.

Yawalpah Road at Pimpama during morning peak hour just off the M1.

There is a recognition of the reality that we love our cars, need our roads and no amount of policy being purely about public transport will change that.

We have to face the reality that you have to encourage both effective public transport nodes as well as support car usage and implement infrastructure there.

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Traffic chaos on the Sundale Bridge. Picture: Richard Gosling

Some people think that with good public transport we will not need roads in the future but even the most forward-looking plans which have things like automatically driven vehicles show that there are still going to be roads.

Mark McCrindle is a social researcher and demographer