Thousands have their say on Mass Transit options

Thousands of submissions will be carefully analysed over the coming weeks ahead of an updated draft Mass Transit Options Analysis report being considered by council later this year.

Council thanked the many residents who provided their thoughts on the future of transport on the Sunshine Coast during a comprehensive eight-week consultation period which was announced to the community on 12 April.

Submissions were invited from 28 April until midnight yesterday, (22/6/21), via a range of methods including online and posted surveys, key stakeholder meetings, pop up information sessions and an intergenerational forum.

Council will now spend the next few months examining and analysing the feedback followed by a review of the draft Options Analysis Report before presenting the report to a future council meeting.

An agenda and meeting details will be published on council’s website prior to the report being considered.

Council’s website and the project Have Your Say page will also be updated with consultation outcomes when the analysis has concluded.

Subject to council’s agreement, a finalised report will be provided to the State Government for consideration and further assessment prior to development of a Detailed Business Case.

Deputy Mayor and Transport Portfolio Councillor Rick Baberowski thanked the community for taking part in active engagement during this lengthy community consultation process.

“From Beerwah to Kawana and every suburb in-between, I’m so very thankful to all those who have either participated online or in person, by attending a range of community engagement events across our region,” Cr Baberowski said.

“We had a strong response to the engagement phase; the next phase will take several weeks to ensure that all of the valuable feedback can be carefully considered.

“The analysis phase will involve reviewing input from meetings and forums and individually analysing the surveys received. It’s important to keep in mind that due to the nature of the open-ended questions the responses will be very detailed.

“All of this information will provide council with rich data to use in this and other projects to ensure that council understands what’s important to our community.

“The survey provided an important opportunity for the community to respond to questions about their current views on growth and transport preferences and how they might change in the future.

“It’s important that we allocate time for the analysis phase as we want to give proper consideration to the thousands who spent their valuable time providing feedback to us.

“A final tally of all responses will be made available in the engagement report once they have been reviewed.”

Public transport is a state government responsibility. Council has an important planning role to encourage investment by the relevant levels of government.

Any mass transit system will need to be supported by more bus services, improved routes and timetables, and better connections to reduce travel times to areas not directly serviced by mass transit.

Visit council’s website for information about the mass transit project and sign up today to receive future project updates.