This suggestion, heavily laden with a rebellious “V for Vendetta” vibe, popped up in a local social media group recently: Blow up the bridge and stop all the arguments right there.
Well, that could work. Go back to the 1920s when they used a ferry for visitors and commuters. It would need a large ferry though, because the bridge now carries between 24,000 and 48,000 vehicles a day, depending on the weather, the fishing, and how many medical appointments the elderly population have on any given day.
“The public consultation is fluff, a panadol for the public, while the planning process continues in the government offices.”
The idea of building a new bridge is familiar to all, a well-worn aspiration though badly weathered and tarnished by decades of public exposure.
Nonetheless, politicians continue to trot out the new bridge in an imagined form and tack on a few new thought bubbles and shiny bling in an effort to distract public attention away from the more important issues they could be working on.
It is disdain for Joe Average from those in power, who pull a nod and a wink as they send forth a smoke screen of pelican roosts, dedicated paths for electric scooters, and safe zones for fishing off an imagined new bridge, not funded yet.
The public consultation is fluff, a panadol for the public, while the planning process continues in the government offices.
The Transport and Main Roads Department, charged with building a new four-lane link onto Bribie, knows where they are going with the bridge.
The corridor was the subject of a study and was approved back in 2014.
The jigsaw of ongoing road widening works along the Caboolture Bribie past Ningi and Sandstone Point will be complete one day. As that project ends, a new one must join up with it, a wider bridge over the passage. The two projects are already in progress.
As the build date for a new bridge draws closer, Joe Average can be assured that the important details have already been decided.
He should put forward suggestions during the game of public consultation by all means, but in the certain knowledge that the experts at the TMR will prevail. This is the job they are paid for.
It is time for people to start swimming between the flags, accept what is already certain, and watch out for red herrings around the bridge.