IN the future households will not own private cars, there will be no buses, no go cards and public transport will be accessed via a phone app.
These were some of the visions of the future raised at a transport forum to discuss ways of eradicating Redland city's transport woes.
Redland City Council organised the event, the first in a series of three, designed to encourage residents to talk about their transport issues and come up with solutions.
Free three-day go cards were handed out to the crowd gathered at the Redlands Performing Arts Centre on Sunday.
Anything is possible, was the message Mayor Karen Williams gave to the 46 participants.
She said she hoped the forums would generate a list of priorities that the council could then take to George Street in an effort to design a better transport system.
Roads including Cleveland-Redland Bay, Moreton Bay, Finucane, Mount Cotton and Rickertts, were listed as priorities.
"I want people to think outside the square and think about the challenges for our city and how they would like us to invest and lobby for transport in the future," Cr Williams said.
"At the end of the three forums, I'm hoping to have a list of our city's priorities that we can start focussing on individually and working with other levels of government.
"We have major pieces of infrastructure that should have been upgraded a decade ago - such as Cleveland-Redland Bay Road and Mount Cotton Road, which are state government roads.
"We need the community to understand who is responsible and work together with other levels of government to share in the investment."
It is not the first time Cr Williams has broached the city’s transport problems.
This year she organised a meeting to discuss better roads into and out of Redlands with all three tiers of government.
She also caught a train into Brisbane last month to start her campaign for better transport systems.
Debate kicked off after three experts outlined their visions for the future.
Principal scientist at CSIRO Dr Stefan Hajkowicz spoke about mega trends across the world including the efficient use of resources, climate change, superbugs and digital disruption.
He said Australia needed to diversify exports and start looking closely at the knowledge economy and realising the ageing population was an asset to be unlocked.
As the world turned digital, more people would work from home and there would be less need to travel to an office, which was why it was important to try to visualise the future before designing infrastructure today, he said.
Automated cars would provide safer roads and reduce the number of privately-owned cars, he told the crowd.
Griffith University's Associate Professor Dr Matthew Burke spoke about how cars changed humans’ lives and said in the future the car would play less of a role.
However Dr Burke said the state was building too many car parks and said a light rail system in Redlands would not be feasible because of the small population.
He also said public transport hubs such as the one at Carindale would become more common even though public transport networks would be better connected and planned.
Infrastructure Department executive director Darren Crombie questioned who would pay to upgrade roads when the state was struggling to pay for hospitals and education.
He said it was important to pinpoint the problems, prioritise them and then set about finding solutions.
Mr Crombie said there would be more public consultation in the future rather than bureaucrats deciding transport structures.
The forums are timely as the draft Redland City Plan 2015 is out for public consultation and a local government infrastructure plan is due to be tabled with the state government next year ahead of the release of the South-East Queensland Regional Plan.
