Media Release 06 August 2007

Southport: T3 lane must go on existing road

A transport lobby group have praised the Transport Minister Paul Lucas for his decision to install T3 lanes on Smith Street at Southport, but have urged the Transport Minister to put it on the existing road, rather than using it as an excuse for widening Smith Street.

The current $9.7 million T3 proposal is to build an extra lane along a 1.3 kilometre section of Smith Street between Geoffrey Avenue and High Street.

“The Minister needs to understand that T3 lanes dramatically increase the capacity of existing roads, meaning you don’t need to widen them or build new ones, even with a growing population” said Community Action for Sustainable Transport (CAST) spokesperson Tristan Peach.

“You can move far more people along the same amount of road simply by allocating it to more efficient road users,” said Mr Peach.

“Putting transit lanes on existing road space is one of the most cost-effective strategies for reducing congestion, and frees up money for improvements to the public transport network” said Mr Peach.

“T3 lanes should be placed on existing roads rather than building new lanes, otherwise the incentive to use the transit lane is taken away because you’re providing more space for single occupant vehicles,” said Mr Peach.

“Widening the road to add a transit lane means you’re giving people incentives to keep driving, rather than making public transport and car pooling a better option,” said Mr Peach.

“Widening the road means you continue to encourage trends of increasing single occupant vehicle use, which leads to more road accidents, pollution, congestion and loss of amenity,” said Mr Peach.

“If we’re serious about improving accessibility for our growing population then we should not be allocating all this money to new roads and road widening. We should be putting T3 lanes on existing road space and investing the money saved into more frequent public transport services,” said Mr Peach.