BUZ the Great Circle Line?

[#Metro]

Interesting thought - BUZ upgrade of the Great Circle Line

- Could be with or without straightening the route
- Big vision that ties together the whole city
- Its a bus so cheap and quick to implement also

- Potential MVP (minimum viable product) improvement would be to split the route into two halves - East and West.
- East route : Chermside-Cannon Hill-Upper Mt Gravatt
- West route: Chermside-Indooroopilly-Upper Mt Gravatt

This would allow consistent timetabling.

WA has the CircleRoute which does very well, and similarly designed routes in Melbourne also do well.

[Gazza]

Agree in general, but probably call it the great circle network, and do 4 routes for the exiting one, and then include other routes like the 590, and other new cross town routes where it makes sense.

A big long route is too hard for timekeeping, and you are limited by making the end points form a circle, so you get wierdness like the wandering it does around sunnybank.

Separate routes can be done more like a series of intersecting chords, or you can pick other logical termini.

[RowBro]

Agree in general, but probably call it the great circle network, and do 4 routes for the exiting one, and then include other routes like the 590, and other new cross town routes where it makes sense.

A big long route is too hard for timekeeping, and you are limited by making the end points form a circle, so you get wierdness like the wandering it does around sunnybank.

Separate routes can be done more like a series of intersecting chords, or you can pick other logical termini.

Tbf it does practically operate as 4 seperate routes with long dwell times at Chermside and other interchanges to make up time if delayed.

[verbatim9]

Yes,  from 6 am - 9 pm  7 days a week 20 mins or better with the service stopping at Skygate DFO instead of bypassing it.

[verbatim9]

Agree in general, but probably call it the great circle network, and do 4 routes for the exiting one, and then include other routes like the 590, and other new cross town routes where it makes sense.

A big long route is too hard for timekeeping, and you are limited by making the end points form a circle, so you get wierdness like the wandering it does around sunnybank.

Separate routes can be done more like a series of intersecting chords, or you can pick other logical termini.

Call it the Smart Loop

[Jonno]

Think is should just become HF routes that provide better cross-ton connectivity.

SEQ 2032 - Bold Transport Vision - SEQ Rail, Metro, Light Rail and BRT

[AnonymouslyBad]

Yep, 100% support doing this.

BUZing the GCL as-is is still a good thing to do, but personally I'd make some pretty dramatic changes to the route. The current route is 1980s BCC thinking and has crap rail connections, even though - if we're going to market the GCL as a single route - it should be about providing express connections between different rail and bus spines rather than functioning as a local service. Nowhere should be serviced by only the GCL.

I've drawn up a few different ideas for this over the years but never got to posting any here--I think a good option would be something like:
Upper Mt Gravatt-Carindale-Cannon Hill-Northgate[1]-Chermside-Enoggera[2]-Indooroopilly (ideally both)-Mt Ommaney[3]-Darra-Altandi[4]-Upper Mt Gravatt
Still with ~1km stops in between, of course, apart from short sections of motorway (ok for the GCL imo).
[1] Not sure if this is practical, I suppose Toombul is ok if not -- I would stop at Hamilton if going to Toombul.
[2] I really think this part of the route needs changing, I don't see the value in going out to Brookside.
[3] This one you could argue for or against but I think it is better than what we have now.
[4] Based around Altandi being the express station but if Salisbury is the future, Salisbury then down through Macgregor is probably better.
Less dramatic changes could still be done to tighten up the GCL a bit - I think something needs to be done about its avoiding of rail stations with high frequency service so it can instead hit a second tier bus interchange.

But again even if the existing GCL was turned into a BUZ I think it would turn out to be quite popular and can always be improved from there.

I actually support the GCL being a single route for marketing purposes. It's highly sectorised in practice so splitting it into 4 routes wouldn't change much of anything.
One day, a "core" circle route may have outlived its usefulness (when we have a large network of cross-town routes), but that day isn't today.