I’ve been on a very long road trip or two in 2025.
But it gives me the opportunity to say the following: road safety in Queensland needs a heavy shock in the arm: not necessarily through new advertising… but a wholesale rethink of what Queensland does for our safety on the road.
REST STOP REVIVAL:
The five key locations that need to be investigated in our minds, for the first locations for modern rest area infrastructure (inc. the concept that rest area sites must be paralleled: one for each direction of traffic) are as follows:
-Between Maroochydore Road and Cooroy on the Bruce Hwy on the Sunshine Coast.
-Between the end of the Gympie Bypass and the start of the future Tiaro Bypass on the Bruce Hwy, that is designed with the future dual carriageway alignment between Curra and Tiaro in mind.
-Between the western side of Cunninghams Gap and Warwick on the Cunningham Highway, which is designed for a future replacement of the Cunninghams Gap crossing (perhaps, a road version of the Via Recta rail proposal of a century ago) in mind.
-Between Miriam Vale and Gin Gin on the Bruce Highway, again designed for future dual carriageway alignment in mind.
-Between Pittsworth and Millmerran on the Gore Highway (as part of any future project to bypass Millmerran).
These locations are key, because they are all on major heavy vehicle travel routes (The Bruce Hwy from Brisbane to the Port of Gladstone, Gore Hwy being part of the Brisbane-Melbourne travel corridor (leading to the Newell Hwy in NSW from Goondiwindi south) and the Cunningham Hwy being the main access to NSW’s New England region from Brisbane’s western corridor (as well as likely serving Inland Rail facilities at Ebenezer).
The need does not exist on the Pacific Motorway between the QLD/NSW border and Eight Mile Plains for a significant light vehicle rest facility due to the high urbanization of the M1 corridor (as well as the Gold Coast being seen pretty much as a destination in itself), leaving very little space for such a facility, although the possibility of reviving the Yatala northbound service centre proposal from the 1990s Pacific Hwy upgrade as a major rest area (with significant heavy vehicle capacity: and the possibility of a integrated inspection area for heavy vehicles should be considered in the long term.
In addition, a strategy needs to be laid out now, concerning a possible significant renewal of facilities at BP’s Caboolture northbound/southbound, Coomera northbound and Yatala southbound service centres to make them more attractive: in light of projects in NSW concerning the complete rebuilds of Pheasant’s Nest service centre on the Hume Highway, Wyong service centre on the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway, and Eastern Creek on the M4 in Western Sydney by Ampol: preferably modelling them on the Buc-ee’s model from the US (where fuel pumps are numerous, and target their retail and food offer to the average driver, rather than the truck driver on his meal break).
Now,
we get to the meat of this:
REVIVING DRIVER REVIVER.
Driver Reviver needs to have state funding tipped in. It’s a obvious fact.
However, the big problem we see coming is the lack of volunteer support from
the younger sections of the community, alongside the lack of modern facilities
available to Driver Reviver teams, on potential sites, as well as the lack of
encouragement by government toward allowing coffee vans/food trucks to utilize
Driver Reviver sites at off peak times.
This brings us to what we believe should be the four pillars of reviving Driver
Reviver in Queensland.
1. Update, modernize facilities.
This means, state government funding to update facilities both currently used
by Driver Reviver and those used in the past to a new minimum standard (fully
sealed/drained parking, defined accessible parking areas, facilities for heavy
vehicles and some commercial uses and accessible toilets), including a
potential partnership with a telecommunications provider to deliver free WiFi
(that is accessible fairly easily for all potential users (no splash pages,
passcodes etc.) at all Driver Reviver locations within Queensland.
2. Allow commercial use of rest areas (food trucks, etc.) initially, when
Driver Reviver services are not operating: before a trial of shared commercial
use when Driver Reviver services are operating.
This means opening up the door to coffee carts, food trucks, etc. being able to
run commercial services at some rest areas at defined off-peak periods
(weekdays outside school holiday periods and long weekends) when a Driver
Reviver service would otherwise not be operating, along with a trial of shared
commercial use during Driver Reviver operating times (weekends, school holidays
and prescribed long weekends) at popular Driver Reviver locations.
3. Move towards a paid Driver Reviver scheme, where people manning these
facilities are actually paid a wage by the QLD government, in a similar way to
how school crossing supervisors are paid by TMR to man road crossings near
schools, before and after school.
This means instead of using volunteers (usually elderly) to man these lifelines
for motorists, a push must be made toward paying attendants at Driver Reviver
locations for their service. The attractant of possibly making just as much
money with eight days work a month, as you would working twenty days a month
will be significant. The paid workforce, could also be utilized as casual
employees to fill vacancies within the wider Driver Reviver system.
And 4. Develop a scheme to offer discounted last minute overnight
accommodation, for light vehicle drivers, to discourage the attitude of some,
who feel it’s their right to drive non-stop between major destinations as a
sense of pride.
This concept builds on the successful Mates Rates campaigns for NQ after recent
disasters, into creating a program that distributes flyers to drivers at Driver
Reviver locations, for hotels, motels, caravan parks etc. within a 2-4hr range
of the DR location that can offer a last minute booking for drivers of light
vehicles wanting to overnight somewhere at a significant discount (that even
undercuts sites such as Booking.com) just by booking direct, with participating
accommodation facilities receiving state government subsidies to handle these
guests easily. In addition, a push for more heavy vehicle-friendly
accommodation should be made by government to reduce the numbers of heavy vehicle drivers doing the midnight runs between Rockhampton and Brisbane, Cairns and Townsville and Townsville and Rockhampton.
And
finally: ROAD SAFETY IN UNISON.
A unified approach to road safety advertising must be sought in Queensland.
The
lack of a consistent approach that unifies a road safety marketing effort,
which ends up with each issue being targeted, whether it be speed, drink
driving, fatigue or even the simple idea of stopping drivers going into
floodwater individually all getting campaigns, and helps the cause of road
safety as a whole less, and less the more it is tried: while entire spectrums
(the rise of e-scooters in Queensland, communities where there are severely
higher numbers of mobility scooters (to the point they are trying to set
Guinness Records every year), even the confusion concerning e-bikes (where parents are buying what is effectively a motorcycle for a child, rather than being steered towards a electric pedal assist cycle (EPAC) model, something that isn't helped by the fact we have no standard legal definition nationally as to what a e-bike is and what a electric motorcycle is) are all ignored despite the fact e-scooter riders, mobility scooter users and the e-bike confused masses (who can't tell the difference between a electric motorbike with a throttle and no pedals and a electric bicycle with pedals) have more risk
than the average motorist of having a accident on any given day of the year.
Meanwhile, across the border: you cannot get away on a country road from
Wallangarra to Newcastle, from Raymond Terrace to Banora Point without at least
two or three billboards for NSW’s overreaching effort to market road safety: Towards
Zero.
And the NSW approach is working.
The yearly road toll in that state since
the beginning of the COVID pandemic has not exceeded 2019 levels once (although 2025 for NSW is slowly creeping up on 2019), let
alone spike afterwards like QLD’s did (which came off historic lows in 2019,
which should have been built on). It’s almost like our road safety management
here in QLD still hasn’t gotten over the period of time in 2020 and 2021, where
our state borders were manned by police, while NSW is aiming low (predicting
zero road fatalities by the 2050’s), and staying low, and could possibly
achieve such a figure sooner than anticipated if enough pressure is put onboard.
Our current road safety strategies, last approved in 2022 are trying to get the
road toll in this state down by 50% by 2031. It’s unachievable to get from 300
to 150 in just five years, without significant changes to behaviour, at
minimum.
The target should rightfully be the following:
Target 0.5: 0.5, representing the number of road fatalities per day, that
should be seen as acceptable.
Times 0.5 by 365 (the number of days in a year),
you’ll get the target road toll Queensland should be aiming for within three to
four years: 183, easily the lowest road toll since the Second World War, and
well on our way towards a wider goal of 3.5 yearly road deaths per 100,000
Queenslanders, despite a growing population.
Ways to achieve “Target 0.5” include:
-Queensland legislating mandatory speed limits for all learner and provisional
drivers, reflecting the example in NSW: where learners licence holders are
restricted to a top speed of 80km/h, P1 license holders are restricted to a top
speed of 90km/h and P2 license holders are restricted to a top speed of
100km/h. This also prevents NSW learners/provisional drivers from gunning it as
soon as they get through the Tugun Bypass tunnel and into Queensland, with the
adoption of the NSW system in Queensland.
-Legislating a alcohol ban for all first year open licence holders for motor
vehicles (similar to first year open motorcycle licence holders), as a
expansion of current zero-alcohol restrictions for learner and provisional
drivers of motor vehicles alongside current restrictions for professional drivers (bus drivers/truckies).
-Develop research into potentially lowering the legal alcohol limit for motor
vehicles from 0.05 to 0.03, along with investigating possible benefits of a
total alcohol ban for motor vehicle use.
-Reverting to a more traditional structure concerning double demerit points:
with such penalties only applied on major holiday periods to all drivers,
instead of targeting specific road users (i.e. repeat offenders) with them year
round.
-The potential to experiment from December 20 to January 10 (i.e. the
Christmas/New Year period) yearly with a zero tolerance approach to drink
driving for all drivers: where even if you have the smallest sample of alcohol
on your breath, you will get fined.
-Expand the Fatal Five, to a Severe Seven: continuing a focus on speeding,
mobile phone distraction, impaired driving (through drugs and alcohol), fatigue
and not wearing a seatbelt as we do now (but under the Target 0.5 banner),
while adding two more: micromobility safety (i.e e-scooters/legal e-bikes (i.e. pedal assist), including
wearing a helmet and promoting speed limits for these vehicles that have become
a part of our lives, and pedestrian safety in a environment increasingly full
of powered vehicles both big and small.
-Investigate whether road safety fine revenue (speeding, impaired driving,
seatbelt non-usage and mobile phone usage by drivers etc.) is being diverted
into general revenue, and work towards all road safety fines (including those
by micromobility users) being moved into a warchest for road safety
improvements (e.g, improved overtaking opportunities on major highways,
improving accessibility and safety for micromobility users in communities (e.g.
segregated bi-directional bike lanes similar to those existing on Elizabeth St
between the Riverside Centre and William St, and the Victoria Bridge, and
Edward St between Elizabeth St and the new Kangaroo Point footbridge in
Brisbane’s CBD (this new bicycle spine didn’t even exist pre-COVID), even
potentially increasing access to driver education for disadvantaged
communities.
-Start reporting flood-related incidents (both survival and fatalities) on the road separately in a similar style to the normal road toll, as part of a wider push to encourage better choices by drivers concerning the dangers for flooded roads.
-Encourage the media to come back together with the Target 0.5 campaign, akin to the Campaign 300, Road Sense (Courier-Mail gestated campaigns: back when they had local motor reviewing capability) and Safety Net (run by 10 News) campaigns run in the late nineties that were surprisingly successful and drove our road toll to historic lows per capita (likely also assisted by the slowdown we all made as drivers on the Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor between 1997 and 2000 as the Pacific Hwy was being rebuilt between Loganholme and Nerang).
The Bruce Highway between Cooroy and Curra, increasingly became a unsafe route, especially as the dual carriageway crept up toward Cooroy, after the completion of a significant dual carriageway deviation from Beerburrum Creek to Caloundra Road in the mid 1980s, and the ultimate dual carriageway completion to Cooroy in the early 21st century.
The twenty year saga of the Cooroy-Curra Bruce Highway upgrade became a race to see what'd get completed first: the last dual carriageway sections between the border and Newcastle for the Pacific Hwy, or the Cooroy-Curra segment's northern link: from Kybong to Curra bypassing Gympie, completing the first significant Bruce Hwy bypass of a town in one hit since Yandina in 1997. The Pacific Hwy won: fully dual carriageway from 2020 with major work finishing just before COVID, while the Gympie Bypass waited until October 2024 to get finished, 27yrs after the dual carriageway bypass of Yandina was completed.
Meanwhile, the rest of the highway suffered, with significant energy pushed onto Cooroy-Curra, long-term planning for Cairns's southern suburbs, and the Townsville Ring Road (a 10 year project to create a Bruce Hwy bypass of Townsville's suburbs) while the key planks in-between fell slowly into single lane inertia with overtaking lanes in between.
Unlike the Pacific Highway, the Bruce Highway achieved some significant single carriageway town bypasses outside the SE: the early nineties Maryborough bypass, following on from the successful Howard-Torbanlea deviation of the mid eighties and the bypassing of Babinda in the mid 1990's are prime examples.
But the accidents became noteworthy: (just to name a few from our neck of the woods) a four car smash, just after Easter 2017 outside Maryborough that caused two fatalities, a triple fatality at the Walker St/Bruce Highway intersection in Maryborough (a intersection, despite being the northern access to Maryborough, and is literally next to the Maryborough motor registry office lacks traffic signals or grade separation) in March 2024 just before Easter, a double fatality just north of Tiaro just after New Year in 2025, a spate of accidents in the Glenorchy area south of Maryborough: a fatal accident in late March 2025, a fuel truck rollover in August 2025 and a significant accident in early November 2025 that all warranted lengthy road closures, even as recently as December 20, 2025: at Aldershot (north of Maryborough), another fatal accident while there has also been two significant truck explosions: Bajool in 2023, and Bororen in 2024, (which both accidents not just put the Bruce out of commission, but the North Coast rail line nearby offline until examinations were made) plus a accident rate so common, a Facebook group was created just to track accidents.
The Bruce Highway of today from Brisbane to Rockhampton particularly, is serving a similar role to the Pacific Highway between Newcastle and Coffs Harbour, with the addition of freight links from Queensland's far north to ports in between (including significant military transfers, especially between Brisbane and Rockhampton and Townsville and Rockhampton (on the way to Shoalwater Bay, one of the Australian Defence Force's largest battlefield training facilities, just outside Rockhampton), such transfers usually peaking when a significant military exercise is planned), while also trying to cope with the growth of councils along it: Bundaberg, Fraser Coast and Gladstone: that take up far wider areas, than councils across the border, Rockhampton and cities beyond, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns are all larger in population than the largest town on the Pacific Hwy in NSW outside the Tweed: Coffs Harbour (that is soon to be bypassed).
Our government needs to realise this fact before a coroner tells them so: the only viable solution for the Bruce Highway is a dual carriageway upgrade, not widened pavement for widened centre lines, that only make it look like there's two carriageways, that still enables crossover head-on accidents to happen: with some additional overtaking opportunities, that also delays the inevitable duplication in some of it's more densely populated segments (e.g. Gladstone-Curra section of the Bruce serves a population of nearly 300,000 people, a population base slowly creeping closer to that of the former Caloundra-Maroochy council areas that make up the Sunshine Coast LGA) like a can kicked down the road.
And, because of the length of the Bruce Highway (along with some significant dual carriageway sections complete, Pine River-Curra, Townsville bypass, Gordonvale-Cairns) I reckon we'll be working on it until 2040 unless significant planning priorities are brought forward using similar methodology to how the Pacific Motorway upgrades were delivered in the 1990's, where environmental impact studies were fast-tracked, so a project that could have taken 5-6 years to complete from EIS to completion, only took four and a half years.
And we believe the most urgent priorities are as follows:
-Curra to Isis River dual carriageway, with it being built to motorway standard (and a 110km/h speed limit) from Aldershot to Curra (with significant upgrades in the Maryborough area to grade separate Bruce Hwy traffic from local traffic, particularly north of the Alice St interchange just after the Henry Palmer Bridge over the Mary River), and build to similar dual carriageway standards as the non-motorway sections of the Pacific Hwy in NSW, between Aldershot and Isis River (with protections for a motorway-standard upgrade, such as provisions for interchanges and offramps).
-Investigation of a significant dual carriageway realignment of the Bruce Highway from Isis River to the Lake Monduran turnoff that bypasses both Gin Gin and Childers (and improves access to Bundaberg), on the scale of the Woolgoolga-Ballina upgrade of the Pacific Highway, being many pieces, one project, at motorway standard (with 110km/h speed limit).
-Investigate dual carriageway bypasses of Miriam Vale, Mount Larcom, Sarina, Proserpine and Bowen.
-A Townsville-Inkerman dual carriageway upgrade (most likely to 110km/h motorway standard), which bypasses Home Hill and Ayr, provides a new crossing of the Burdekin River and has provisions within for a North Coast railway line rerouting alongside the new highway and a combined railway station for Home Hill/Ayr on the new alignment. Also extends the benefits of a bypassed Townsville far beyond the city.
-Investigations into a Cardwell and Ingham bypass that also reroutes the North Coast railway line away from the coast.
-Dust off the transit proposals for Cairns's southern suburbs, to encourage people to use the Bruce Highway less, for local travel, including potentially investing in either a C-Link light rail project from Gordonvale to Cairns Airport, or a possible light metro solution (similar to the driverless Honolulu Skyline rail line) linking Cairns Airport to Gordonvale, and Cairns's CBD and Cairns's northern beaches.
-Face a significant decision: transforming the Rockhampton and Mackay Ring Roads into viable town bypasses, like the Townsville Ring Road... or investigate significant new dual carriageway alignments at motorway standard bypassing both centres.
And that is just outside the SE corner.
Two other key projects in the SE corner also need to be fast-tracked:
-widening the Caloundra Road-Beerburrum Creek section of the Bruce to six lanes.
-widening the Bruce Highway between the Sunshine Motorway and Yandina-Coolum Road to six lanes (a first stage, through Forest Glen should have been done in concert with the Maroochydore Road interchange upgrade)
In addition, any funding distribution for projects (currently a 80-20 split between federal government and state) should be broken down even further, with a guarantee that 80% of all state/federal funding combined for the Bruce Highway... must be spent on dual carriageway upgrades or better north of Curra, along with a 80-20 split commitment by both Canberra and the state concerning auxiliary works that pair well with future dual carriageway work on the Bruce Highway (Maryborough northern bypass and Maryborough-Hervey Bay Road upgrade from Urraween Rd to Maryborough northern bypass, Isis Highway upgrade to a future interchange with the new Bruce Highway and upgraded road links to the Port of Gladstone from a upgraded Bruce Highway.)
Most critically: the Bruce Highway dual carriageway upgrade, will be the single most important project branded with the Target 0.5 campaign, and thus would be branded with the Target 0.5 campaign alone (no politically driven slogans, only the state and federal coats of arms on all construction and promotional signage, billboards, digital and television advertising), a approach similar to how the NSW RTA constantly sold the Pacific Hwy upgrade as simply... building you a safer highway.
Comments
Post a Comment