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Brisbane's Trams

Started by ozbob, March 02, 2014, 11:05:50 AM

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verbatim9

Could this be a solution for reigniting the debate for some Tram lines in Brisbane for suitable corridors?

Alstom Catenary free Trams

https://www.alstom.com/press-releases-news/2018/8/alstom-supply-5-extra-citadis-trams-bordeaux-metropole

achiruel

Quote from: verbatim9 on August 03, 2018, 15:38:11 PM
Could this be a solution for reigniting the debate for some Tram lines in Brisbane for suitable corridors?

Alstom Catenary free Trams

https://www.alstom.com/press-releases-news/2018/8/alstom-supply-5-extra-citadis-trams-bordeaux-metropole

I think the issue in Brisbane is more the lack of road space rather than catenary. Where would you put tram tracks down Boundary St through West End, for example?
Sure, you could get rid of the street parking, which wouldn't bother me, but I'm still doubtful whether there'd be enough room for tram tracks as well.
What was acceptable clearances safety wise in the 1920s-1950s may not be permissible today.

Cazza

As much as I love trams and think they are a great form of medium/mass transit, I don't believe that we will (or should) ever see them back in Brisbane. The physical and hidden costs of relaying the track and building a new tram network is far too large to outweigh the benefits.

Just look at what is happening to George St (and Surry Hills and Kingsford) in Sydney, businesses suffering from long disruptions, some of which will never find their feet again (I'm aware this is light rail but the same thing will still apply to trams). It's not worth it.

BRT (Brisbane Metro in our case) can do everything light rail/trams can without the massive price tag or the disruptions that construction will cause. All Brisbane needs is a redesigned and functional bus network along with BRT and you would find it would actually be more efficient (in both the short and long term) than buses and trams (or light rail).

SurfRail

I'm coming to believe that less and less, although that is coloured by some of my recent travels (eg travelling on the Translohr in Venice which was utterly horrid in terms of ride quality - mind you standard buses rode better).

Sydney is a different kettle of fish - they had no recent light rail experience (in construction or procurement) whereas we do, and the bidders also have the advantage of knowing to treat the situation more cautiously. 

Anecdotally, I understand from people working in project delivery roles that TfNSW is particularly renowned for pushing risk onto bidders and being overly precious about specifications, which is a big driver of cost.

The issue with Brisbane light rail would be more that in my mind it would work best as a replacement for something like the Blue Cityglider and the 199 to cope with the intensification of development around the West End, the Valley and Teneriffe, so wouldn't be something that would solve the greater network problems for the whole of the southside.
Ride the G:

ozbob

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MaxHeadway

Quote from: Cazza on August 03, 2018, 15:51:19 PM
As much as I love trams and think they are a great form of medium/mass transit, I don't believe that we will (or should) ever see them back in Brisbane. The physical and hidden costs of relaying the track and building a new tram network is far too large to outweigh the benefits.

Bus lanes and priority signalling would provide a lot more bang for your buck. The best thing about the Gold Coast light rail isn't that the vehicles run on rails; their success is mainly due to the frequencies and reserved right-of-way (plus operational discipline!).

Cazza

Exactly. Look at the B-Line in Sydney:
-Services every 10 mins or so 7 days between 5am-12am
-Bus lanes along most of the route (however, most are peak hour only in peak direction and there are so crucial gaps that need to be filled). They should be looking at bus lanes the entire length to reduce travel times further.
-Double decker buses with a high capacity of about 120 people (compared to about 300 on the GCLR).
-A higher top speed than most trams

Apart from the capacity (the shortfall can be made with the flexibility of running the service at a higher frequency), there is not really anything that BRT (or even buses themselves) can't do that light rail can.

ozbob

Couriermail Quest --> 'Baby-faced Motormen' remember final days of Brisbane's Tramways

QuoteTHEY were known as the "Baby-faced Motormen" – a group of five young conductors taken on in the last intake for motormen intruction in Brisbane.

They often featured in news photos with then lord mayor Clem Jones as the final days of the trams approached because of their youthfulness – and they didn't like it.

Ipswich man Dennis Parry was one of them.

He remembers the achievement of rising to the ranks of Motorman, instructed by the chief inspector George Carkeet, who lived at Stones Corner.

But the younger motormen earned a reputation as the last days of the tramways approached.

"We were a bit wild," he said.

"Even then I had a reputation that I didn't deserve but it didn't matter.

"We weren't that bad. We just wanted to keep our trams."

His mate Rusty Williams (story below) remembers shutting the window on Clem Jones and driving off as the lord mayor approached his tram on his last run to shake his hand.

With the sound of the compressors going as he sat on FM 554 – one of the trams he used to drive and the last tram to run in Brisbane – waiting for it to take off at the Brisbane Tramways Museum at Ferny Grove, the memories came flooding back for Mr Parry.

"I had this very tram going out to Belmont in a thunder storm and I got hit by lighting," he said.

"It flashed down the side of me. I rang them up. I told them I had a problem with the tram, I told them I'd been struck by lightning and I said the lights are going on and off like a neon sign. The bloke at the control didn't believe me.

"I said send out a mobile out and check it.

"We went down the road and we got out to Belmont. A bloke came out and we were going back and all of a sudden the lights went off. He came around yelling out, lights going on and he said "Into town, we'll go express". So we went all the way to the Gaba and they changed the tram at The Gabba."

Mr Parry moved on to driving buses after the tramways closed, as many motormen did, and later headed bus companies.

Long-time Holland Park resident Ron Bennion worked in the Tramways' Milton workshops and the Ipswich Rd workshops near the Mater Hospital as an apprentice electrician.

Mr Bennion, who lived at Annerley at the time, worked with the Tramways for three years before being transferred to the trolleybuses and later the Queensland Electricity Generating Board.

Another of the five Baby-faced Motormen Rusty Williams recalled his encounter with then Lord Mayor Clem Jones as he drove the second last tram run through Brisbane. He recalls those days in his account below:

I had the pleasure of driving the second last tram in Brisbane on the last night.

I was one of five young conductors made up to motorman.

We were called "the Baby-faced Motormen". We were 19 or 20 years old.

Then I was called up for national service – off I went to Vietnam. Came back to driving trams until the last night.

There was a photo taken of me driving a tram outside the lord mayor Clem Jones' house at Belmont.

Dear Clem and I did not get on as he wanted me to be the pin-up boy of Brisbane transport.

I wanted to drive trams and was a bit of a rebel when I came back from Vietnam, I drove the last tram from Balmoral on the last night on the way in the Valley.

Clem's tram was waiting to be the last tram.

He walked over to my tram to shake my hand and I closed the window on him and drove off.

Next April for the 50th anniversary of the last tram in Brisbane I am hoping to be at Brisbane. Still to this day I have many fond memories of the mates I worked with and the trams.

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ozbob

Half baked projects, have long term consequences ...
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ozbob

Half baked projects, have long term consequences ...
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ozbob

Half baked projects, have long term consequences ...
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ozbob

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ozbob

Couriermail --> 50 years after Brisbane's trams were scrapped, it's not too late to fix this this epic planning fail

QuoteIT WAS one of the most appalling urban planning mistakes of the 20th century yet, today, as we mark the 50th anniversary of Brisbane's last tram service, there's reason for optimism as urban planners set about trying to right this historical wrong.

Those humble trams which trundled their way through Brisbane's city and surrounding suburbs from June 21, 1897, until April 13, 1969, are still the perfect panacea to urban congestion.


Yet, ironically enough, it was urban congestion which prompted their demise.

Emeritus Professor Peter Spearritt from UQ's School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry and an expert in urbanisation, sees the removal of trams in the post war years as an urban planning catastrophe which swept the developed world.

In Australia, only Melbourne sidestepped the disaster, remaining the only English speaking capital city to retain a fully functioning tram system.

And the reason why countries from New Zealand to Ireland to the great cities of Europe banished trams?

"To avoid traffic congestion," laughs Spearritt, semi-retired but still a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and co-editor of five major public websites dealing with history and economics.

"That is the truth – they all thought if they cleaned out the trams, that would allow the new modern motor car to move easily through their cities."

Trams still have sentimental value among ageing Queenslanders who remember being spirited swiftly from suburban homes into downtown Brisbane to go shopping with their mum and dad.

But, as Spearritt says, their practical value far outweighs their nostalgic value, and as the 21st century unfolds, more and more communities will see the value in going back to the future, and bringing back the tram.

IT WAS the global obsession with the motor car – combined with the almost euphoric economic optimism that swept through the world in the 50s and 60s – that swept trams aside.

The tram, in the eyes of many, ceased to be viewed as an essential feature of an urban landscape and came to represent a relic of a shabby, industrial past.

In London, even the august publication The Economist loudly crowed its support when London began dismantling its tram system in the decade after the war.

The magazine, at the forefront of economic trends since it was founded in 1843 to advocate for the repeal of the Corn Laws, saw the car as the symbol of the "new economy", the tram a relic of the old.

Its journalists advocated the public get onto a car or one of the slick new Leyland buses that Leyland Motors (later British Leyland) were churning out and which eventually found their way to Brisbane in the 60s.

In Brisbane, many rightly point the finger at the legendary mayor Clem Jones as the villain who dispatched the Brisbane tram to history as he became enamoured with the shiny new Fords and Holdens rolling off Australian assembly lines.

Jones was further inspired in his enthusiasm for cars by a visit to Brisbane by American urban planner, Wilbur Smith, whose country had embraced the car and changed their landscape with motels and freeways to accommodate it.

Smith, who advocated and oversaw the building of roads and underground carparks in cities to cater for increases in population, wrote a report advocating that Brisbane do the same and rid itself of trams and trolley buses.

ON SEPTEMBER 28, 1962, when a massive fire at the Paddington tram depot destroyed a fifth of the city's tram fleet, legend has it that Jones declared "let it burn". That legend has been enhanced and embellished over the years to put Jones centre stage as the arsonist who lit the fire himself so he could wipe out the tram fleet. This was, of course, all urban myth, and to the overwhelming majority of Brisbane residents who remember Jones, his lifelong commitment to public service and building a better Brisbane effortlessly eclipses the mistakes (easily identifiable in hindsight) he might have made regarding trams.

But Spearritt does acknowledge it was the vision of the ever-optimistic Jones, combined with a few other factors, which led to the demise of Brisbane's tram system which formally ended when the last service made its way from Balmoral to Ascot on April 13, 1969.

Jones' futuristic visions, the ever growing power of the motoring lobby under the RACQ, and the decision by then prime minister John Curtin's government in the midst of World War II to rob state governments of the power to impose income tax, all conspired to consign the tram to history.

"Canberra had got control of income tax off the state during the war and Canberra, under the influence of the motoring lobby, began spending big on the nation's road system after the war," Spearritt says.

WHILE THE car appears to have always been with us, millions of Australians could only dream of one even up to and including the war years.

The first Holden, made in a collaboration between Holden and the US General Motors, rolled off the assembly line in 1948. But it was the decision by the new conservative government under Bob Menzies in 1949 to end petrol rationing which spurred on Australians to buy one.

Melbourne held onto its trams only because it had a powerful, independent statutory body running them (the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board, which merged into the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1983).

Melbourne also had a series of wide, European-inspired boulevards where trams could keep their own territory and not compete for space with other traffic, while in cities such as Sydney and Brisbane, roads were merely an enhanced and paved system of tracks hacked out by convicts.

Yet Spearritt insists all is not lost. The opening of the Helensvale to Southport light rail project a year ago is one of those green shoots of urban development that point to a more positive approach to planning, he says.

Hundreds of kilometres of Brisbane bus lanes, he says, are also perfectly situated to be transformed back into tram lines, all free of interference with motorised traffic competing for space.

Says Spearritt, "Light rail just makes sense for our cities, and I think that planners are beginning to recognise that.''

Attend a commemoration day at Tramway St, Ferny Grove, today. brisbanetramwaymuseum.org
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ozbob

' The Trams of Brisbane'

A song is based on a speech  to the Lions Club in 1969, the year they scrapped the Brisbane trams and trolleybuses ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIX66QUmMyU
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ozbob

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ozbob

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verbatim9

^^ There is still room for a small LRT network in the future that complements the BNE Metro. Most likely a line from West end to Newstead and New farm.

ozbob

A few random photographs from the State Library Queensland.  They have 100s ...

Electric trams travelling along Queen Street from the Victoria Bridge, Brisbane, 1939

https://t.co/SHhxmUXVHE



====

Trams lined up in Queen Street, Brisbane, ca. 1965
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

https://t.co/tt8uPEmbUZ



====

Trams on Vulture Street, South Brisbane, ca. 1901
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

https://t.co/OfJS9RH5tk



====

Trams on a busy Queen Street in Brisbane, Queensland, ca. 1898

https://t.co/vHexOiIAKc



====

Peace celebrations, Queen Street, Brisbane, 1945

https://t.co/DPwbV5I6zy



====

Traffic congestion at the corner of Ann, Wickham and Boundary Streets, Fortitude Valley, 1951

https://t.co/i6xEutjqEB



====

Street scene in Brisbane, 1939

https://t.co/mHdQ50H6Vl



====

Opening of the Enoggera Tramway, August 1949 - Huge crowds welcomed the first tram to Enoggera in August 1949 when the one and a quarter mile extension from Alderley was opened.

https://t.co/A42Z3qLk7Y



====

Clarence Corner, Stanley Street, South Brisbane, ca. 1906

https://t.co/2JOiZgznXc

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ozbob

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ozbob

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ozbob

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ozbob

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ozbob

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ozbob

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ozbob

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#Metro

I'm wondering if anyone has any images of timetables for the tram network?

Would be good to know how frequent they were on each line around the city.
Negative people... have a problem for every solution. Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members.

ozbob

1968 Brisbane Tram Timetables

4th December 2022

RAIL Back On Track (http://backontrack.org) is pleased to release a copy of the 1968 Brisbane Tram Network timetable for interest.

RAIL Back On Track acknowledges and the thanks the Brisbane Tramway Museum Society for making this information available.

The following timetables from 1968 have been provided:

- Ascot Tram Service (Oriel Park No. 70, Doomben No. 60)
- Ashgrove Tram Service (Ashgrove No. 76, Oleander Drive No. 66, Stewarts Road No. 56)
- Balmoral Tram Service (Balmoral No. 70, No. 60, Barton Rd No. 50)
- Bardon Tram Service (Bardon No. 74, Paddington No. 64, Bernhard St No. 44)
- Belmont Tram Service (Belmont No. 96, Camp Hill No. 05)
- Chermside Tram Service (Chermside No. 72, Lutwyche No. 62, Kedron Bridge No. 52)
- Clayfield Tram Service (Clayfield No. 71, Oriel Road No. 61)
- Dutton Park Tram Service (Dutton Park No. 78)
- Enoggera Tram Service (Enoggera No. 72, Newmarket No. 62)
- Grange Tram Service (Grange No. 76, Kedron Brook Road, No. 66)
- Mt Gravatt Tram Service (Mt. Gravatt No.99, Nursery Road No.69, Holland Park No. 59)
- New Farm Wharf Tram Service (New Farm Wharf No. 78, New Farm Ferry No. 68)
- Salisbury Tram Service (Salisbury No. 71, Moorooka No. 51)
- St Pauls Tce Tram Service (No. 07)
- Stafford Tram Service and Feeder Buses (No. 74)
- West End Tram Service (West End No. 77. Dornoch Tce No. 67)

> https://backontrack.org/docs/trams/tram_tt_1968.pdf

Trams ran in Brisbane from 1885 to 1969. Brisbane City Council took control of the tram network after it was formed in 1925. In the years before the car, Brisbane's growth was essentially 'tram-oriented development'. BCC back then was careful to ensure that buses did not wastefully compete with trams. Feeder bus services appear in the Stafford Tram service timetable that proceeded from the tram terminus at Stafford Road. These buses did not run to the city.

Tram services then offered high off-peak frequency. During the day, trams generally arrived every 12 minutes, becoming less frequent in the afternoon. Extra, supplementary trams were added from North Quay or Fortitude Valley. Trams ran every 20 minutes or better on a Saturday. On Sunday, trams generally ran half hourly, likely a reflection of restricted shop trading for Sundays.

Not much remains of the tram network today. The Route 375 bus is essentially the No.74 tram service along the same route. Other routes such as Balmoral (incorporated into Bulimba 230 today) are half-hourly bus services. Many suburbs have less bus frequency today than what the trams provided back then.

The Future

The Busway Electric Rapid Transport BERT ('Brisbane Metro') electric bi-articulated bus plan is the next step in the evolution of Brisbane's public transport. However, it is limited to busway operation only. We think the basic task ahead for BCC and Translink is to essentially double the number of high frequency ' BUZ ' routes in the suburbs along main and local arterial roads such as to Bulimba, Centenary, Yeronga and Albany Creek. That way Brisbane residents can have something once again as useful and frequent as the Brisbane tram network once was.

References:

1. Trams in Brisbane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Brisbane
2. Brisbane Tramway Museum http://www.brisbanetramwaymuseum.org/
3. Brisbane City Council 1968 Tram Timetable https://backontrack.org/docs/trams/tram_tt_1968.pdf

Photographs: State Library of Queensland

Tram coming off the Victoria Bridge, Brisbane, ca. 1965
https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE2708552

2022-12-04 04.28.01 collections.slq.qld.gov.au 160a88730e10.jpg

Trams lined up in Queen Street, Brisbane, ca. 1965
https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE2708555

2022-12-04 04.27.22 collections.slq.qld.gov.au 28d91fd11066.jpg
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#Metro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnqq_SVYRXk

"8mm film taken by Sydney Tramway Museum member Richard Jones during the latter years of the Brisbane Tramway Network."
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ozbob

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#Metro

We need to also get an idea of the whole city.

The NFSA has this video which is now in 4K (1964).
These were Australian Government migration videos intended to give an idea of what each city was like.

Check out the Bowen Hills train at the end...

Video states that shops on Saturday were open in the mornings only, which might explain the afternoon frequency drop in the tram timetable.

Lots of things to note:

- Smoking on PT and everywhere
- Cars with no seatbelt
- Bus and tram with no doors
- No railway electrification
- Coal train crossing Woolloongabba (Would never be approved today)
- People riding bicycles around with no helmet
- Road quality pretty poor
- No Queen Street Mall
- CBD far smaller than today and City Hall being the dominant building

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbukeJZftOs

:is-
Negative people... have a problem for every solution. Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members.

ozbob

Rusty Williams > Remembering the Brisbane Tramways Well tomorrow is the 54th Anniversary of the end of BRISBANE TRAMS....

Posted by Remembering the Brisbane Tramways on Wednesday, 12 April 2023
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ozbob

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