Re: Go-ahead for business case for Gold Coast Light Rail stage four
  Anthony Dudley Horscroft

Suggest refer to the Gold Coast Airport Master Plan.  This is dated 2017, and is updated every 5 years from what I remember.

From outside the terminal buildings, in the pedestrian plaza betweeen the terminal and the high rise car park, the line is projected to just clip the eastern corner of the 'roundhouse' to the north, and then head through the gap between the T shaped building and the large rectangular building to the NW.  It then goes through the car parks close to or through the Car Wash, to reach the highway.

In the other direction, it goes down Terminal Drive as you suggest but does not make the sharp turn of Terminal Drive, Instead it heads in a Ely direction through car parks and roadways, very close to the Southern Cross Uni building (very logical place for a tram stop).  This is as far as the 'indicative only' plan goes.

There is no mention of how it will cross the Gold Coast Highway and the connexions to Kirra/Coolangatta - I would think that the best route would be to ramp up to use the southern lane on the flyover (with a 7.5 minute headway or even a 5 minute headway if traffic demand requires, a short length of single track would be OK).  Use this to reach either Musgrave  Street on the beach front and then Marine Parade, or turn into the median of Coolangatta Road and then up Miles Streeet to reach Marine Parade.  The overpass has three lanes reducing to two at the top, but never have I ever seen traffic enough to get any where near filling a single lane.

Marine Parade should be the preferred route through Coolangatta, light to moderate traffic, held up now and again through cars exiting or finding a parking spot, but this is rare as parking is two or three hours, I think.  Griffith Street has heavy traffic, and hold ups are more frequent as being a shopping area car parks are vacated more often so there are more delays through waiting for room to proceed. Both routes have pedestrian crossings, but I would suggest that people crossing Marine Parade are more leisurely and are more like to give way to an approaching tram.

At the eastern end, Clarke Street is one way N'bnd but there is ample room for trams to have a double track.  And it leads fairly easily around the roundabout into Wharf Street and to the bus (and future tram) terminal at Tweed Mall.

Regards

Dudley

On 11/08/2020 8:02 pm, 'Richard Youl' via TramsDownUnder wrote:
>  Obviously I’m pleased that this is going ahead. I still can’t think of any reason why these two stages were ever numbered 3a and 3b instead of 3 and 4 but at least they have fixed it.

>

> It’s interesting that Stage 4 is stated to be 13 km long. When preparing the bus ride video of this stage I checked with the Google Earth measuring tool and also a map measurer on my street directory, and both of these came up with 11.5 km, right into the airport.

>

> It’s also interesting that the official maps show the line going straight past the airport with no entry into the airport grounds, 600 m away and much too far to lug baggage. My suggestion is below.

>

> Personally I hope that CPB is is the successful tenderer as they did a great job in the opening of Stage 2 a couple of months early and possibly under budget.

>

>

> On another tack, I was chatting to a ticket inspector on the tram yesterday after he had finished his checking of the tram passengers. He said that ridership is picking up nicely again but also stated that for a while nursing staff were not using the tram to get from the Parkwood park and ride to the hospital because other passengers were abusing them and accusing them of bringing Covid onto the trams. Disgusting.

>

> Nevertheless with university still providing virtual lectures into students’ homes, the Parkwood park and ride is only about a third full, largely hospital staff I expect.

>

> The only potential difficulty at this stage would be a change of government at the state election in October. The opposition is unfortunately somewhat impotent but you never know what the voting public might do.

>

> Regards,

>

>> On 11 Aug 2020, at 4:10 pm, Tony Galloway arg@...> wrote:

>>

>>> https://www.railexpress.com.au/go-ahead-for-business-case-for-gold-coast-light-rail-stage-four/ https://www.railexpress.com.au/go-ahead-for-business-case-for-gold-coast-light-rail-stage-four/

>>>