Rail reform must start with passion NOTHING TO SHOW: An estimated $40 million-plus has been tipped into the Cross River Rail project already. A GENERATION of state transport ministers have taken their eyes off Queensland Rail. So when QR wants $4 billion for the Cross River Rail project, they get on board without question. For today's Editorial and other opinion pieces click here Queensland needs current Transport Minister Scott Emerson to not just accept what the agency's boffins put to him. QR needs passion and ambition from its minister, as does the taxpayer. If QR has no direction from its minister, it makes it up itself. The late Don Lane is remembered for bad things which overshadow the many good things he achieved as transport minister. Under his leadership, QR built the Merivale Bridge to allow north and south suburban rail networks to meet. Since then, without strong ministerial guidance, QR has become a greedy, highly unionised, feather-bedded failure and needs major reform. No minister has questioned why QR has massive land holdings throughout the southeast and the whole of Queensland. In the southeast, much of this land could be used for more than just QR tasks. QR could return money to budget black holes by selling the airspace above every suburban railway station. This could also pay for expansion of QR suburban services. This space above the tracks could be sold to developers for shopping centres, parking for commuters and for public or private apartment housing. Such air space could be sold for projects which combine all of these social goods. Ministers have allowed QR to evade social good. Look at the poor maintenance of rail land. Its graffiti-spattered, overgrown and unkempt property offers the worst visual pollution of any landowner and local authorities have no power to intervene. QR is the worst neighbour you could ever have. Without ministerial passion and ambition, QR has failed to plan for the future. The railway lines to Ipswich, the bayside, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast growth corridors should be four lanes of rail. To Cleveland and the Gold Coast there is only one. There should be a passenger rail into the Brisbane Valley communities once again. QR pulled it out a few years ago but still offers rail to Esk - but you have to catch a once-a-day bus for the last part. Toowoomba and Dalby should be part of the Brisbane suburban electric network, as should Beaudesert, Warwick, Stanthorpe, Kingaroy and the Sunshine Coast. The 25-year-old rail line to Cleveland, built in Lane's time, should be continued through Redland Bay to Beenleigh and there should be a direct rail to the Gold Coast from Ipswich through Springfield and Logan, not the "change trains at Roma Street" system we currently have. And then there's the high farce of the high-cost railway line to "not quite Redcliffe." After a century of waiting for a Redcliffe rail link, we don't get the extension to the Sandgate/Shorncliffe line (built in 1882) most expected. Instead we get a "service" which involves changing trains at Petrie to access the massive North Lakes community. Battlers in Beachmere and Deception Bay are not considered. Before more dollars, QR needs clear ministerial vision, passion and ambition for rail. Gary Hardgrave was federal MP for Moreton from 1996-2007. He was a federal minister from 2001-07 and a member of the House Committee on Transport which completed a national review of rail in the 1990s. He is now a presenter with radio station 4BC Brisbane.