Construction works for the Gold Coast's light rail stage 3 have officially begun with state, federal, and local politicians gathering in Broadbeach over the weekend to turn the sod.
With shovel in hand, Transport and Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey declared the "Gold Coast has fallen in love with light rail".
But take a five-minute walk down the Gold Coast Highway, and skate shop owner Julian Lee is not so sure.
"Don't know where they get that," he said.
"I can see the council has fallen in love with it. I don't think the actual people have fallen in love with it."
Mr Lee's business has been in Mermaid Beach for nine years and is one of many facing significant disruption along the new route.
"When the first stage was done along Southport, Surfers [Paradise], all the retail businesses that were on the light rail there all had to shut," he said.
He said parking opportunities also vanished.
Mr Lee said the loss of parking was his biggest concern but he was also sceptical of government support.
"You just can't trust what they tell you," he said.
"We're just going to take it as it comes. We can't really do much until it's here and see if it affects us and take steps from there."
The more than $1.1 billion project, funded by all three tiers of government, is set to change this stretch of the Gold Coast.
Whether that's good or bad, depends on who you ask.
'Short-term pain'
Mr Bailey said 800,000 light rail trips were recorded in August — the highest figure since the pandemic shrunk patronage.
Stage 3 involves a 6.5-kilometre extension, south to Burleigh Heads along the Gold Coast Highway, with eight stations and five new trams scheduled for completion in 2025.
Mr Bailey said the state government would not "sugar-coat" the disruption stage 3's construction would cause but had ruled out compensation for businesses.
"I apologise for any inconvenience," he said. "But I think people will understand that this is about getting a balanced transport network on the Gold Coast.
"We've got to get that short-term pain for a long-term gain."
Pizza shop owner Kate Biglands, whose business is metres away from the soon-to-be-built line, said she was already experiencing disruption.
"They turned off our power to upgrade the electrical pole and we had to close for the morning session, so we lost business," Ms Biglands said.
"There's no compensation for that."
Ms Biglands said most people did not use public transport to pick up a pizza anyway, so even after the construction phase was over there would be problems for customers in cars.
"Our customers won't have anywhere to park, our staff won't have anywhere to park," she said.
A dense city
The stage 3 budget has increased from $709 million to more than $1.1 billion, with the state government blaming rising construction costs for the blow-out.
However, the deputy director of the Cities Research Institute at Griffith University, Professor Matthew Burke, said light rail made sense.
"There are very few places in urban Australia left with this kind of density, this kind of activity, that do not have a decent public transport system," he said.
"[Light rail] is the most boring success story in recent public transport planning."
The Gold Coast has largely been regarded as a car-dependent city, which Professor Burke said made building public transport infrastructure, along with changing community attitudes, difficult.
"We're not helped by the planners of the 1980s and '90s who built some suburbs with particularly thin roads," he said.
"We planned the city for the car.
"Now, we're trying to retrofit it for more space-efficient modes so it can work in the 21st century."
Professor Burke said stage 3 needed to remain on schedule but said poor weather could prove to be a hurdle.
"If we have three years like the three years we've just had, I think we'll find ourselves in trouble," he said.
