Navigating weekend sports on the Gold Coast with multiple children can be a tricky and costly exercise.
With three teenage boys Tamborine Mountain mother Fiona Jensen is all too familiar with the juggle and hoped a submission to extend the Demand Responsive Transport service, run by Transitcare, to included weekends would be successful.
“We have spent weekends driving them backwards and forwards to get them to multiple games when they are playing at different venues,” Ms Jensen said.
“If they could get themselves to Helensvale they could get themselves to the game.”
Ms Jensen was one of several families who provided a statement for the submission calling on the state government to extend the service.
She said as the cost of living crisis deepens being able to access a service for only 50 cents would also be extremely helpful.
“It would give them the opportunity to be independent and off the mountain on weekends, when they are not working or playing sport,” she said.
“It’s liberating, good for them to learn life skills and for their mental health to be able to hang out at the beach and gives them options to occupy themselves.”
“The kids would use it on school holidays to hang out at the coast and with their friends.”
She said there have been many times when the family has used the weekday service.
“It’s a fabulous service; they pick you up from your door and if it could be expanded it would be so much more useful to many more people” Ms Jensen said.
“We’ve had to use it when we’ve been down to one car. It’s very handy to have it otherwise there is no way to get off the mountain.
“It would be great to use it on the weekends if we were going to airport.”
She said as she works in Brisbane, she’d love to be able to use it to get to the train station, but unfortunately the times are either too early or too late so she’d welcome more times for the weekday service.
Members of the Working Group for Public Transport on Tamborine Mountain, an ongoing Rotary Community Service project, are waiting to hear from Translink after handing their submission to the Minster for Transport.
