Major New City for North of Brisbane (Caboolture West)

[AnonymouslyBad]

5 suburbs, minimal transport

I'm trying to be optimistic on the busway thing. A busway could certainly be a good solution for this area. But the corridor in the plan isn't continuous, and it only directly serves about a third of the development. It's hard to believe an actual dedicated busway is "locked in".

I think the tide has definitely started to turn - in that this area won't develop properly without PT infrastructure - so hopefully the state government sees the same logic and gets it built and it's not just another Yarrabilba.

[ozbob]

Couriermail --> First of 2000 Caboolture West homes approved in new development $

The development of a 2000-home community in Caboolture West has been given the go ahead, marking the first project approved for the future regional city of 70,000 people.

Waraba (Caboolture West) will eventually become home to a satellite city the size of Mackay with 70,000 residents, — and its has all started with the approval of this first development application.

Moreton Bay Mayor Peter Flannery said developers Stockland would now be able to build 2050 dwellings over a 175.4ha area located at 60-172 Litherland Rd (Upper Caboolture) after a unanimous vote of support from council. ...

[timh]

You can see by the map the old Wamuran branch corridor borders the northern edge of this new development. I'm hoping that there is some more firm commitment to using the corridor for a busway, as we've seen floating around some of the documentation. A suburb of this size needs SOMETHING in the way of a trunk route, and a busway feeding Cabo train station is better than nothing!

In the long term I can't see a development of the size they're talking about (70k population) not being supported by rail. Obviously nothing in the works now (big mistake imo) but it's inevitable that one day the traffic problems will get so bad that something will have to happen. And ultimately it will be much more expensive to do that late!

[HappyTrainGuy]

Busway is a pie in the sky dream. Caboolture bus lines doesn't have enough buses for starters for busway frequency justification (otherwise you'll have a northern busway repeat where leading to opening day you only had 2 bus routes using it) and the corridor is just nearly wide enough for 1 bus further out along with other issues when you get to the built up area.

[Stillwater]

Hello ... state government. Anyone home?

Waraba - 70,000 people
City of Aura - 50,000 people
Beerwah East - 45,000 people
Palmview - 17,000 people

And more people to be clustered around Beerwah and Landsborough.

The population of Moreton Bay Shire (soon to be declared a City) will be 700,000 in 2041 -- bigger than Ipswich. The Sunshine Coast City Council will have 500,000 residents.

Another rail study anyone?

[Jonno]

We need a toll road tunnel so they can all drive to the CBD!!!!

[timh]

Busway is a pie in the sky dream. Caboolture bus lines doesn't have enough buses for starters for busway frequency justification (otherwise you'll have a northern busway repeat where leading to opening day you only had 2 bus routes using it) and the corridor is just nearly wide enough for 1 bus further out along with other issues when you get to the built up area.

I wouldn't run it past Moodlu, no need.

[Stillwater]

I believe the plan is to run bus services around Waraba, feeding to the Caboolture Railway Station. Platform No.1 there is narrow and thought would need to be given to that issue. Also, council carparfk opposite the station building might need to be multi-story, as residents of Waraba would prefer to drive to the station rather than catch the bus.

Morayfield Station would come under pressure, although it is okay for the time being.

North Caboolture Railway Station (opposite showgrounds)??

[Gazza]

Busway is a pie in the sky dream. Caboolture bus lines doesn't have enough buses for starters for busway frequency justification (otherwise you'll have a northern busway repeat where leading to opening day you only had 2 bus routes using it) and the corridor is just nearly wide enough for 1 bus further out along with other issues when you get to the built up area.

See this is an example of you being dismissive for no reason.

Presumably a new busway would come with acquisition of a few new electric buses for CBLs fleet.

[Jonno]

Multi-story park n rides should be enough

[HappyTrainGuy]

Busway is a pie in the sky dream. Caboolture bus lines doesn't have enough buses for starters for busway frequency justification (otherwise you'll have a northern busway repeat where leading to opening day you only had 2 bus routes using it) and the corridor is just nearly wide enough for 1 bus further out along with other issues when you get to the built up area.

See this is an example of you being dismissive for no reason.

Presumably a new busway would come with acquisition of a few new electric buses for CBLs fleet.

I only dismissed the idea of a busway on a old very narrow corridor - a corridor that is only just wide enough for a car with steep embankments going down hill to the creek on the west and steep embankments on the east going up the hill that would require a lot of earthworks and property resumptions to widen along a very slow alignment that borders and weaves around houses, businesses and lumber mill (all while there is a 100kph direct highway next to it) and pointed out there are issues when you start to get to built up areas of Caboolture along with the general lack of buses available. Much of the corridor only just had water and waste water lines installed along the corridor after its closure and during the shared pathway development so these services also need to be revised.

You need substantially more than a few. Very similar to Thompsons where the majority of their fleet aren't meant or used for suburban services but rather for school and charter services. This isn't BCC where there are low floor buses out the wazoo. They only operate 10 or so Translink routes across Caboolture and Bribie Island with much of the Translink school buses being run with coaches with most route frequencies of 30-90+ minutes.

If you want busways to the middle on nowhere at least improve network coverage, frequencies and span of hours first to atleast justify this expensive infrastructure. God forbid should you get a train to Caboolture only to see its 59 mins until your next peak hour bus to get home. Might aswell just drive to the station which is exactly what everyone does now.

[JimmyP]

IMO for a busway out there, it should simply be a bus only road with accessible bus stops and level pedestrian crossings across, not the massive might-as-well-be-a-train stations like the current busways.

The Dutch busway around Almere is a fantastic example. Low cost and easy to do.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Even a basic new road requires the same result. You still end up with a narrow corridor that needs to be widened and follows a slow twisty alignment west of the king street crossing. East of that you still have the drainage channel, road crossings and schools to contend with (how do you get from the rail corridor to the station? Another intersection? Go back to king street? Henzell road?) and for what? A handful of buses that run every 30-90 minutes that do not run after 6-7pm? Do you prioritise people only going to the Brisbane CBD or locals that need to access services in Caboolture CBD/Morayfield? Why not throw up some peak transit lanes along Beerburrum road and run via the dag and western bruce highway? Who knows metro can jump onboard for some perth style above highway bus stops for that stupid Central Springs development. Hell even combine it for access to the high school if we want to throw money around

There is a reason everyone out there from Albany Creek to Beerwah drives and that's due to not having a bus, poor bus frequency, poor coverage and most importantly p%ss poor span of hours due to lack of rollingstock and drivers. Chermside-RBWH has 24 buses between 10pm-11pm. God forbid should anyone here look at a Warner, Bray Park or Strathpine peak hour bus timetable. Any delay to the peak rail network and you have no PT from the station home. Get to Caboolture station (narangba-Caboolture for that matter) at 7-7.30pm and the last handful of services are about to leave.

If anything it just shows we need a proper transit authority and possibly the state taking on the role of providing the running of buses.

[JimmyP]

You'd obviously not go to the trouble of building even a simple busway to run services every 90 minutes, please stop being silly. If it were to be built (I don't know the area, hence why i'm very vague and adding plenty of 'if', plus it doesn't specifically have to run the exact route of the old railway), there would need to be a large reorg of the bus services of the area.
Do you know what would help change people driving due to lack of buses? A big reorg of the bus routes! No point slamming every proposal with that excuse when the reorg would be required for something like this anyway. Not that I personally see it coming to fruition in the medium term myself, but we can always live in hope.

As for crossings, at grade is fine with signal priority. Not priority as in 'The lights will start the sequence when the bus is at the intersection', priority as in 'the lights will start their sequency as the bus approaches and will change to allow the bus to run through at speed, no slowing or stopping', as per the Almere system.

[timh]

Yeah when I mentioned a busway in the corridor, I literally just meant build a two way road for buses only down the wide straight bit, with simple bus stops. Like the transitwas in Sydney. You could build it where the corridor is wide, basically until a bit east of the Williams road overpass, and build a park n ride there at the end of it.

Obviously all this new development requires new feeder bus routes to train stations, and therefore the operators need more buses. I thought that kinda went without saying. I'm not asking for Maglev to Doomben. Just build a priority corridor where there's already some vacant land to give some buses some priority and make the idea of a feeder bus more attractive to locals

[HappyTrainGuy]

You'd obviously not go to the trouble of building even a simple busway to run services every 90 minutes, please stop being silly. If it were to be built (I don't know the area, hence why i'm very vague and adding plenty of 'if', plus it doesn't specifically have to run the exact route of the old railway), there would need to be a large reorg of the bus services of the area.
Do you know what would help change people driving due to lack of buses? A big reorg of the bus routes! No point slamming every proposal with that excuse when the reorg would be required for something like this anyway. Not that I personally see it coming to fruition in the medium term myself, but we can always live in hope.

As for crossings, at grade is fine with signal priority. Not priority as in 'The lights will start the sequence when the bus is at the intersection', priority as in 'the lights will start their sequency as the bus approaches and will change to allow the bus to run through at speed, no slowing or stopping', as per the Almere system.

Crossings I was referring to was at the Caboolture station end (I doubt you'll use the existing corridor for the busway start here hence my Henzell or King street comments) which then feeds into the intersection prior where there is a round about next to the mentioned busway which would then become the main entrance point - which is already a problematic area.

Reorganisation isn't the problem. You can reorganise all you want you simply need more buses but most importantly more drivers. This applies to Kangaroo bus lines aswell who provide services around Burpengary and Narangba so operator boundaries are another conflict problem. Also this isn't brisbane. People work locally and people also work in Brisbane and Sunshine Coast/Deception Bay. There are areas quite close to stations and built up areas that are very very large properties with low density. Narangba is a good example where all the density is over 1km from the station. With urban sprawl little housing estates are popping up in random areas. As I mentioned the central springs development. Next to the high school but on the otherside of the highway. And these housing estates are developed for just cramming as many houses into a small area that makes providing pt services uneconomical. Also look at the redevelopment at Caboolture North off Dances And Emu roads. That was large farmland and large blocks of land redeveloped for properties for those that want a bigger back yard. No trip generators and no shops. Just bigger housing blocks with single dwellings on it. You simply can't have a frequent service there. So driving is your only realistic option. This applies for much of Caboolture (look between Morayfield and Caboolture stations and how there is massive housing going in), Morayfield has solid size blocks of low density land), Burpengary (how many buses run west there), Narangaba (already mentioned but where are the houses next to the station? There aren't any) and even Dakabin has had a substantial amount of infill development. There are future proposed infill stations between Elimbah-Narangba.

The dag is always going to be upgraded, more infill developments are proposed north of the dag and there will be a western Bruce Highway/state controlled road aswell. From memory most of the residential development is west and more inline with Rocksberg and Morayfield with the north being more industrial zoned development. Caboolture River road and Bellmere road will be the main trunk routes and already along them are once again low density dwellings with random housing estates dotted along it. How does that affect the busway and proposed frequencies using it? You could argue that a busway or bus type priority to Burpengary could provide faster transit times? How about a Morayfield link or even a busway/bus priority from Narangba as that's where the western Bruce highway would be headed.

[ozbob]

https://twitter.com/7NewsBrisbane/status/1668903993412849664

[SteelPan]

Where's the heavy rail corridor?      ohh...that's right....Queeeennssslllaaaaannnnddd!

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes --> New Gabba Metro connection delayed, $210m for Caboolture housing

Brisbane's new Gabba underground train station – which finishes in 2026 – will not have a $450 million new bus station until 2030, south-east Queensland's new City Deal documents show.

However, planning is rapidly accelerating for one of the region's newest cities, with $210 million set aside to provide affordable housing in Caboolture West. ...

    

[ozbob]

https://x.com/UnwalkableBris1/status/1755843244620161333?s=20

[ozbob]

https://x.com/greaterbne/status/1755856795355185617?s=20