"Motorists will face a commute of up to 2.5 hours between Brisbane and the Gold Coast in the next two decades, as up to 30,000 extra cars clog the Pacific Motorway each day.
Data released exclusively to Brisbane Times can reveal Transport and Main Roads’ forecasts of congestion blow-outs and soaring traffic on the motorways to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Ipswich by 2046."
Well, how could anyone have possibly seen this coming? Seems likely that even the ancient, windy GC/Beenleigh line will be faster than the M1 in a few years. The question is, will there be enough capacity, even with the current LGCFR project? My thought is no. We desperately need more capacity between Kuraby and Dutton Park. How that can be achieved, I don’t know.
I guess the other alternative is a second railway corridor between Beenleigh and Boggo Rd, which would largely leave LGCFR as superfluous to requirements, at least for now. Maybe in the future, GC trains would need to run via both corridors simply to have sufficient capacity.