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Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has written to home-owners about congestion in the city’s north-west.

“Unfortunately,State Transport Minister Mark Bailey has repeatedly refused to rule out above ground options through a long-preserved track of bushland known as the North West Transport Corridor,” Schrinner wrote.

The letter gives a link to Schrinner’s website where he again encourages people to provide their details to “help us tell the State Government” the corridor should not be developed.

While only part of the corridor is bushland,and a small section has already become a bypass at Everton Park,the council cited above-ground restrictions as justification for its unsolicitedproposal for a tunnel.

However,the federal agencyInfrastructure Australia rejected the proposal,partly on the basis that above-ground options had not been fully considered. Bailey’s state department had earlier refused to be involved in the council’s work,despite being a key stakeholder for any such proposals.

The future of the corridor has been a contentious issue in several council,state and federal election campaigns,and Schrinner’s letter comes ahead of state and council elections in 2024.

Bailey said he would refer the letter to theOffice of the Independent Assessor because it was misleading - he has rejected claims he wants to build a rail line through bushland - and a misuse of council resources.

“The letter is clearly a piece of party-political content which appears to have been funded by Brisbane ratepayers and is on lord mayoral letterhead,” the minister said.

A council spokeswoman on Thursday confirmed the letters were funded by the council.

Schrinner,through a spokeswoman,later accused Bailey of wanting to “prioritise playing politics and making misleading OIA referrals instead of actually doing his job and getting residents out of traffic”.

The linked website advises that the details of anyone who joins the campaign “will be used for advocacy purposes and may be used for further correspondence”.

Bailey claimed it was “data harvesting” for the Liberal National Party,however there was no political authorisation statement.

Council opposition leader Jared Cassidy said “it’s shameful that the lord mayor is wasting ratepayers’ money on a deceitful,data-mining exercise”.

Schrinner’s spokeswoman again accused Bailey of wanting to “bulldoze bushland along the North West Transport Corridor” and said the Minister had an obligation to respond to community concerns about congestion.

By the end of 2023,Bailey will have an opportunity to outline Labor’s solution to congestion when he receivesdata,research and options from a long-running study.

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