Eastern Busway

[SurfRail]

The top of Camp Hill (east of Boundary / Wiles up to around where the tram tracks start) is a touch too tight for on-road running I think.

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes --> Smart-ticketed trains from Monday but wheels barely turn on eastern busway plan

...

However, commuters will be left waiting longer yet for the long-delayed $1.3 billion eastern busway extension to Capalaba — which stalled at Coorparoo after the 2011 floods.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner announced on Friday the council would join its Redlands counterparts and state government in completing a study to investigate the use of Brisbane Metro vehicles on the route.

Schrinner had already conceded a fully segregated busway was "unlikely to be viable", but said in a statement the study would consider ways of realising the vision first put forward 25 years ago.

This could include tapping the private sector to deliver off-street bus stations at key locations to reduce costs, Brisbane City Council transport chair Ryan Murphy said.

"Coorparoo Square was actually constructed to incorporate an underground bus station in the future," Murphy said.

The initial busway was set to be built by 2026, with Redland mayor Karen Williams and Capalaba Labor MP Don Brown petitioning the state in 2018 to consider expanding the route further to Victoria Point and incorporating Brisbane Metro.

Brisbane's $1.2 billion Metro services are expected to start running on the existing bus network in 2024.

[ozbob]

Sent to all outlets:

The wheels of the bus go round and round ... (Eastern Busway/Transitway)

13th November 2022

RAIL Back On Track (http://backontrack.org) welcomes the announcement that Brisbane City Council, the State Government and Redland City Council will all contribute funding towards an Eastern Transit/Busway [Metro] Study (1).

An assessment brief of Queensland Brisbane Transitways - Northern and Eastern has been parked at Infrastructure Australia since 2012.
See > https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications/qld-brisbane-transit-ways

DTMR Eastern Transitway (Stage 1) https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/projects/eastern-transitway
states that some progress has been made. Stage 1 of the Eastern Transitway, located on Old Cleveland Road from Carindale Street to Narracott Street is now in use. There is no reason why the Brisbane Metro vehicles (which are just bi-articulated buses) cannot run on transitways.
Bi-articulated buses do normal road and street running in many locations world wide.

RAIL Back On Track has campaigned over decades for the reform of the BCC bus network and the competition of an Eastern Transit/Busway to shift public transport usage as a share of all trips far closer to cities like Vancouver, Paris, Olso, Vienna and Copenhagen. Currently active and public transport in SEQ moves less than 20% of all trips.  A figure than has not changed in almost 30 years.  In the cities above that figure is between 60% to 80% ... with every trip not made by car saving tax-payers a minimum of 6x the subsidy of the trip by public transport. Yes, it costs the tax-payer more for people to drive than it does catch public transport, ride or walk and yes, in these cities their tradies get to work and the freight gets delivered.

Whilst an Eastern Busway/Transitway Study is welcomed, it remains unclear what the future design of the public transport network is and if the Metro bi-articulated electric buses are the right choice in the longer term.

The Department of Transport and Main Roads has published a number of SEQ Regional Transport Plans that show a Frequent Public Transport Network. Yet the consultation around the associated routes to deliver this frequent network has never occurred.

Consulting project by project, route by route doesn't allow the public to understand the big-picture and what the future might look like.  Nor does it allow an assessment of the combination of Heavy Rail, Light Rail, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and local feeder buses needed to achieve it?  Nor importantly help people understand why it needs to look that way.  SEQ will never get close to best-practice doing this project by project. The passenger experience on the inner stations of the Busway is already known to discourage people from catching buses or transferring where most convenient. Forcing even more buses into the mix is recipe for busway gridlock.

RAIL Back On Track calls for the Minster for Transport, in parallel to the Eastern Busway/Transitway Study, to organise consultation on the future public transport routes as well as the mix of vehicles needed to achieve greater than 60% of all trips by active and public transport.

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track https://backontrack.org


1. Smart-ticketed trains from Monday but wheels barely turn on eastern busway plan
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/smart-ticketed-trains-from-monday-but-wheels-barely-turn-on-eastern-busway-plan-20221111-p5bxga.html

[ozbob]

Facebook ...

The wheels of the bus go round and round ... (Eastern Busway/Transitway) 13th November 2022 RAIL Back On Track...

Posted by RAIL - Back On Track on Saturday, 12 November 2022

[ozbob]

https://twitter.com/railbotforum/status/1591494318623444992

[ozbob]

Bi-Articulated Buses in Hamburg, Germany (Three-piece)! Bi-Gelenkbusse in Hamburg, Deutschland 2017

[ozbob]

Couriermail --> Olympic venues drive plan for electric buses from UQ to Capalaba $

Plans to link southern Redlands to an express busway are under investigation as part of a transport study ahead of the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics Games.

It is envisaged the busway will service the Brisbane International Shooting Centre, Chandler Indoor Sports Centre, the Anna Meares Velodrome, and a proposed whitewater rafting centre at Birkdale.

Councils in Brisbane and Redland have joined forces with the state government to design and evaluate the missing bus link to Capalaba.

Redland, Brisbane and the state government will contribute funding for the Eastern Metro Study to investigate extending the busway from where it ends at Coorparoo to Capalaba.

The express busway from St Lucia's University of Queensland to Capalaba's CBD was first mooted in 2007, with the original plan for it to come online by 2026.

However, that was ditched after the devastation across the southeast of the 2011 floods.

The project took a step forward after the federal government said it would foot $300 million of the $944 million bill for the Brisbane Metro project, designed to run buses from the University of Queensland at St Lucia to Capalaba. ...