Let's get real. The dramas (NIMBYs) and major costs involved in resumptions of private property, grade separation at many intersections (not just one or two), topography and so on are making the Sunnybank Hills/Browns Plains concept unworkable. Beaudesert Road/Mount Lindsay Highway is no where near wide enough to accomodate a double track rail line for the length involved. Grade separation at Hellawell/Learoyd Road, Algester/Jackson Road, Compton Road, Ormskirk Street, Kameruka Street, Nottingham/Honeysuckle Way, Algester Road/Illaweena Street, Logan Motorway, Various off/on ramps through the Johnson Road/Browns Plains Road overpass section. There is rather a steep climb out of Acacia Ridge up to the Hellawell Road intersection. The costs would be astronomical.
The proposed corridor Salisbury to Kagaru follows the standard gauge line to Kagaru will impact on relatively few homes. The recently opened Beaudesert Road overpass at Acacia Ridge was built in such a way to allow for the proposed expansion. The line would serve, Acacia Ridge.
Algester/Parkinson/Calamvale and could also service Sunnybank Hills using a bus connection. It would also serve Larapinta/Pallara (new growth areas and industrial estates), Browns Plains (bus connection will harvest a much larger area), Forestdale/Hillcrest, Boronia Heights, Greenbank, North Maclean/New Beith, Flagstone, Undullah (bus connections Jimboomba/Cedar Grove), Kagaru and so on. Stations are not proposed yet for some of these locations but the growth in these areas is already happening. Proposed populations for the State Government supported mini (?) cities in this area does not mean all those people will travel into the Brisbane CBD to work but for those that do a fast train trip will preclude their need to buy a car to get there. The plan that has been put forward in the report proposes a grid of interconnecting bus services linking to the railway.
For once, it appears to me, that the Government is being proactive and trying to determine the construction of a rail corridor into a fast developing region BEFORE it is built and all those people that have purchased their new home also have bought two or three cars and become dependent solely on their motor vehicles.