Queensland Shadow Minister of Infrastructure Main Roads and Transport Fiona Simpson defends LNP plans for the Brisbane Urban Corridor
By Michael House
Opposition spokeswoman on infrastructure, main roads and transport Fiona Simpson has defended the LNP’s plans for the Brisbane Urban Corridor in the Brisbane suburb of Mt Gravatt.
The party says it will give priority to residential and commuting traffic instead of the proposed National Truck Route at the Kessels-Mains Roads intersection, which the LNP says will crush 79 businesses in the area.
Simpson says the LNP will create an underpass at the intersection and replace the current Logan Motorway Kuraby truck toll with a free-flow truck toll to Granard- Kessels Road.
The Urban Corridor currently has restricted use for heavy vehicles and all trucks travelling along the corridor have been approved to be there.
Simpson says the LNP plans for the corridor is what the “community wants” and says the success of the current road infrastructure has been fabricated by the government.
“[Minister for Infrastructure and Planning] Paul Lucas claims that 4000 trucks on average each week are diverted off Kessels Road onto the Logan Motorway.
“Yet when I asked him to detail the figures in October he said the figure was 658 heavy vehicles a week,” Simpson says.
The political wrangling over the corridor prompted Queensland Trucking Association Chief Executive Peter Garske to accuse the LNP of “political expedience” for their plans to kill off the truck route.