21 December 2019 - 100 Homes Affected

100 homes affected? Ah, that's not so bad then, is it? Further on in that Gold Coast Bulletin article we learn that the "100 homes" are mentioned in the context of only one small section of the Coomera Connector, a sparsely populated area (Gold Coast Division 1) where the road would go mostly through cane fields. The real number for the whole 45 km of that corridor is many times higher. How high? That depends on how affected. Air pollution can have observable negative effects on health up to 1.5 km from the road. That's tens of thousands of people affected (* see below for calculation). Could the TMR Department and the Labor and Liberal/National parties look into that before building a 6-lane motorway through populated areas? https://sandiego.urbdezine.com/2015/05/28/what-is-a-safe-distance-to-live-or-work-near-high-auto-emission-roads/ https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/a-quarter-of-angelenos-breathe-244224

* The potential area of highly elevated traffic-related pollution: 45km * 1.5km * 2 = 135 km2. Current population density along the corridor varies greatly. In Coomera, the density was 612 people per 1 km2 in 2017: https://population.com.au/sa2/309071251  Assuming that eventually all land around the Coomera Connector would be built up with similar density, the number of people living within 1.5km from it would be about 83 thousand. 

5 December 2019 - Public Consultation Ends on 8 December

The public consultation on the Coomera Connector project (Second M1) closes on 8 December. It looks like there are two places to provide feedback:

On stage 1: https://coomeraconnector.tmr.qld.gov.au/coomera-connector-stage-1
On stage 2: https://coomeraconnector.tmr.qld.gov.au/stage-2 

You need to register and then sign-in.
If you haven't had your say yet, or only provided feedback on one of the stages, please complete it by Sunday.

Please distribute this message to as many people and groups as possible. Thank you.
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Here is my feedback on stage 2:

It is unacceptable to have a motorway so close to homes in Coomera: The homes in The Foreshore, parts of Coomera Waters, Lura, and Camelot are going to be 10-20m from that road? Why do we have residential zoning if the government can put a 24x7 polluting and loud motorway in the middle of it?

Your options, as I see them, are:

1. Ignore politics and look at other options of de-congesting M1 that include improving public transport. More people would use trains, for example, if they could get to and from the train station by bus and if they could get cheap monthly passes. Leave Coomera Connector as a wildlife reserve, maybe with walking and biking trails. Walking and biking along a motorway is not an option. Try walking along M1, or get on the pedestrian bridge in Helensvale to experience how loud and foul a motorway is for somebody not in a car.

2. If you get pushed into continuing this project, go with a 4-lane, not 6-lane, ground-level, quiet surface, and a maximum 60km/h road. The lower the speed, the lower the noise. In places where it is closest to homes, install the best sound barriers possible. An earth wall and a sound barrier on top might be best. Leaving a few trees here and there will not fix the noise. Trees are a poor sound barrier: http://ta-inc.com/focus-on-acoustics-trees-as-sound-barriers/

Kind regards,
Tom Andraszek