Koala Park Bypass: Councils Hidden Bypass Since 1975 — an Engineering Scandal Revealed!

🚨 What You Need to Know:

1. It Was a Bypass in 1975—and Still Is

   • Council’s own records from 1975 show that 3,000 vehicles per day were already using Tabilban, Ocean Parade, and Reserve Street as a through-route—clearly bypassing arterial roads.

   • Today, that number has at times peaked to over 15,000 vehicles per day—almost 20 times the capacity as per the Gold Coast City Plan for residential access streets and 5 times the capacity for collector streets.

1. • Internal Council documents reveal they discussed closing the route as early as the 1970s, acknowledging it was being abused as a bypass.

1. • Over 50% of local residents voted to stop through traffic, yet Council refused to act.

1. • Council knew about the issues as early as the 1970’s, yet failed to build a proper road bypass, instead institutionalised an unsafe and non-compliant bypass through residential streets.

⚖️ Legal Violations

• Transport Infrastructure Act 1994 (QLD)
  Sections 9 and 9A mandate that local governments must manage road infrastructure in a manner that ensures safety, sustainability, and public benefit.

  • Diverting arterial traffic into low-order residential streets violates the intent and purpose of this legislation.

• Local Government Act 2009
  Section 69 states that roads can only be closed or diverted if a suitable alternative exists. In Koala Park, that alternative — the direct extension of Tabilban Street — has existed all along but was blocked by Council without proper legislative justification.

• Misuse of Public Roads under the Land Act
  Council’s claim that the missing Tabilban link lies within a conservation zone is provably false. The route is a gazetted road reserve with no legal grounds for permanent closure.

📐 Engineering Failures & Breaches –– National Benchmarks and Best Practice

• Austroads, Queensland Streets, and IPWEA Guidelines all set strict traffic volume thresholds:

  • Access streets: <750 vehicles/day

  • Collector roads: <3,000 vehicles/day and <6,000 vehicles/day for modern developments as per the IPWEA.

  • Reserve Street & Ocean Parade is carrying nearly 20x its maximum capacity of vehicles per day, with dangerous blind corners, inadequate site lines and road reserve width.

• Environmental Capacity & Safety
  Council has failed to meet the “acceptable environmental capacity” of these streets and continues to violate engineering best practices — creating noise, danger, emissions, and road degradation in a residential setting.

• Ethical Misconduct
  The route’s reclassification from a “Collector” to a “Major Collector” does not comply to any standard, and was conducted without the supporting documentation required under national benchmarks. This undermines engineering ethics and exposes Council to liability.

🧨 The Truth:

This isn’t poor planning — it’s administrative negligence, deception and wilful misconduct that violates state law, engineering ethics, and the trust of the community. Residents have been lied to, misled, and silenced. What should be a peaceful, koala-rich community has been turned into a high-traffic corridor nightmare and will only get worse—all because Council chose secrecy over service. It’s a deliberate, decades-long cover-up.