Warren Truss says he hasn’t be asked for funding for Gold Coast light rail second stage
THE Queensland Government has not even approached their Federal Government counterparts for help with stage two of the light rail, Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss revealed yesterday.
“That’s — that hasn’t been put to us actually, not officially,” he said. “Well not really even unofficially because it’s not generally the kind of thing we’ve been funding.
“But we’ve certainly got a very busy road and rail program that we will be funding.”
Asked if he’d completely rule out Federal funding of the extension, Mr Truss said “we haven’t been approached”.
Despite having the support of Premier Campbell Newman, Transport Minister Scott Emerson, most local LNP MPs and Gold Coasters, the vital transport is yet to receive the official green light from the Government.
It is understood it will take two and a half years to build and test the extension before it can take passengers, meaning it has to start by March to be ready before the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Plans for a second-stage connection to the heavy rail station at Helensvale have been under way for months, and Queensland Transport has last year awarded a contract worth $1,392,733 for ‘engineering and technical advisory services” for the Gold Coast Light Rail Stage Two.
However, Treasurer Tim Nicholls, on the Coast to announce the exit 54 upgrade, said more planning was needed before the plan would be funded.
“We’ve always been supportive of the consideration of the light rail and the extension of the light rail but we have always said we’ll do that in a very planned and methodical way,” he said.
“We want to make sure that we get the best outcome in a value-for-money sense for Queenslanders.
“We know that the first proposal put together by the Labor Government got its numbers quite substantially wrong and Queenslanders have had to pick an extra $65 million a year in order to meet that.”
Mr Nicholls was reluctant to give any pre-2018 pledge on how long that methodical planning would take.
“We’ll look at the business case,” he said..
“Rushed projects are always the projects that cost more — like this one at exit 54, we’ve worked very carefully with the town centre developers, we’ve worked with our colleagues at a federal level to make sure we get the best outcome and we’ll be doing the same throughout Queensland.”
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