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Townsville Port Access Road

By Victoria Morrison,

Prime Minister John Howard announced on Friday that the Australian Government will provide $95 million towards the construction of the Townsville Port Access Road.

A dedicated port access road has been an issue in the growing city of Townsville for many years now. Currently all trucks coming from the west and south have to travel along suburban streets to access the port, causing problems for local residents.

The Member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay said the new access route would be a win-win situation for Townsville.

“The new eastern access route will ease noise and congestion problems along the Stuart Drive route into town, and will also benefit residents using Boundary Street and Railway Avenue,” Mr Lindsay said.

“It will make the movement of goods and raw materials more efficient and bring more business and jobs to our region.”

Currently road trains have to stop 15km south of Townsville and then make two trips with one trailer at a time, which is a waste of time and fuel.

The Port of Townsville expects total trade to triple over the next 15 years from what is already Queensland's third largest port.

Current exports include minerals, sugar, fertiliser, molasses, general cargo, timber, meat products and cattle. The major imports are nickel ore, oil, cement, zinc concentrates and general cargo.

Australian Government funding for this project is capped at $95 million with the remainder of the estimated $190 million cost to be provided by the Queensland Government.

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Snouts in troughs

By: wil (Registered ) on 10-10-2007 05:19

Great to see Howard agrees with George Colbran and Kevin Rudd's commitment to fund the Port Access Road, instead of Peter Lindsay's non-sensical southern highway entrance upgrade idea (the bulk of which actually lies in the next electorate, Dawson!?) This, despite Rudd being openly criticised by the government at the time he made the announcement, last December. The Port Access Road was first proposed in 1968 and it took the real possibility of losing Herbert (and Government), for it suddenly to be of interest to Howard and Lindsay. Snout it up boys.

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Based on lies

By: James (Registered ) on 19-10-2007 06:00

There seems to be a lot of rhetoric but few facts in this article, so here is the real story.

The reason for proposed road has nothing to do with traffic, it is all about opening up land next to Townsville for the development of heavy and toxic industry. If this road goes ahead it will allow for the development of industries like lead smelters and Alumina refineries to be built less than 10 km upwind of the Townsville CBD in a wetland area next to the Great Barrier Reef. The fact that the road isn’t needed to fix traffic problems is clearly demonstrated in this statement from attachment 4 of the preliminary information (Townsville Port Access Environmental Impact Statement Assessment Report prepared by the Director-General Queensland Transport) “While it is true that it is difficult to justify an Eastern Corridor on capacity grounds alone”.

The Townsville Port Access Impact Assessment Study, Final Report clearly indicates that Option 1, the upgrade of existing road and rail infrastructure is not only the cheapest and most environmentally benign option, it is also all that is required to meet traffic and commodity volumes until at least 2025 (which was the extent of the modelling undertaken to identify projections of future traffic needs).

This road is all about supplying big business with cheap industrial land next to a ready source of cheap labor (well much cheaper than if they developed these industries in say Mount Isa).

You have to wonder why government bothers with Environmental Impact Assessments when they make political promises to fund projects before they have been assessed and approved.

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