Article: Brisbane traffic woe to ease as CityCats to resume with delays

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From the Courier Mail click here!

Brisbane traffic woe to ease as CityCats to resume with delays

Brisbane traffic woe to ease as CityCats to resume with delays
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Alison Sandy, Robyn Ironside

November 24, 2008 06:22pm

BRISBANE commuters can expect some relief on the roads tomorrow, with CityCats resuming services at dawn before grinding to a halt again at dusk.

Drivers suffered a nightmare run on the roads earlier today, compounded by road closures and diversions after several incidents including a truck driver who lost his load and a rail crossing malfunction.

All three outbound lanes of Breakfast Creek Road were blocked at the Dunlop Street intersection between 5am and 8.30am, causing congestion through Fortitude Valley, right over the Story Bridge to Kangaroo Point.

The traffic woes on the southside were exacerbated when a boom-gate got stuck for three hours at Cavendish Road, Coorparoo and problems with traffic lights on Old Cleveland Road.

There was also a two car crash on Beaudesert Road at Calamvale.

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said the CityCats, which service almost 17,000 passengers a day, would be operational again tomorrow, but in a limited capacity.

He said CityCat speed limits would be reduced from 25 to 15 knots, resulting in fewer services and delays of 10-15 minutes.

"The fleet stopped running at 6pm Friday due to a large amount of debris caused by flooding to the west of Brisbane, which could cause a safety hazard for the vessels," he said.

"We've today been speaking with Maritime Safety Queensland, the harbour master and the skippers of the vessels and we're comfortable running below speed in daylight hours."

Cr Newman said the situation would continue to be monitored and full services would be restored as soon as the threat of debris has passed.

RACQ traffic and safety executive manager John Wikman said Brisbane's traffic system was "so fragile" that it didn't take much disruption for it to spiral into gridlock on the major arterial roads.

"The absence of CityCats from the public transport system no doubt contributed to the traffic chaos but the wider issue of congestion in Brisbane is not going away," he said.

"Brisbane needs a proper ring road system in place to remove through traffic from the CBD area.

"Despite planned investment in relieving congestion, the

My blog comment:

The Citycats and ferries are an important piece of the public transport puzzle.  There are obvious capacity limits but it is great that some Citycats are being progressively added to the fleet.
We need to maximise all modes, but particularly rail. Rail will give the bulk mass transit capacity that will allow river ferry and bus to cope.

Despite the public assurances by TransLink personnel, the reality is that proactive measures are simply not happening.

Planning disasters such as the failure to incorporate a bus interchange at Indooroopilly railway station as part of the upgrade has to be the biggest transport failure in the modern era, and boy have there been a few.

On going issues with the go card are ignored (at least publicly) and we are now subject to a further expensive go card advertising blitz when the system is still not reliable for many.   Vague assurances that the refund process for go card users who cop incorrect fixed fares etc. would be fixed have proved to be worthless.  Users are treated as either latent fare evaders or incompetent users.  It is little wonder that folks are not happy.