The State Government's announcement of a planned tunnel from Toowong to Everton Park is great news for the people of the inner western suburbs.
This futuristic plan would link the Western Freeway with the Bruce Highway.
But what really needs to happen is the scrapping of the Moggill Ferry linking the Brisbane suburb of Moggill with the Ipswich suburb of Riverview.
This 1878 relic of our past originally linked the two fledgling suburbs on either side of the Brisbane River in bygone days when Cobb & Co coaches plied the route from Brisbane to Ipswich.
The Moggill Ferry is currently out of operation for its biennial servicing.
The extra 32km round trip this is causing for motorists shows how important this link is.
A bridge needs to be constructed across the Brisbane River as part of a major western ring road.
The most-sensible place would be at Gailes as a northerly extension of the Logan Motorway across the Brisbane River to Priors Pocket and then through Moggill and the north-western suburbs of Brisbane to link with the Bruce Highway.
The key advantage of a cross-river bridge at Gailes is that is would serve the people of Ipswich and Logan City as well as the western suburbs of Brisbane.
The western suburbs silver-tails might object to this new road through the rarefied atmosphere of Moggill Heights but planning for a major western Brisbane ring road is imperative with the population explosion set for southeast Queensland in the next 20 years.
The Moggill Ferry might be a quaint historic addition to the landscape of Greater Brisbane but a 131 year old vehicular cable ferry is hardly a modern means of transport between the state capital and Queensland's first provincial city.
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PAUL TULLY: paul@tully.org.au
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