15 Aug 2022: BCC Must Expand BUZ and Brisbane Metro to Solve Northside Traffic

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Brisbane City Council Must Expand BUZ and Brisbane Metro to Solve Northside Traffic Woes

15th August 2022

RAIL Back On Track (http://backontrack.org) calls on Brisbane City Council to explore practical public transport options in the wake of its Northside Motorway proposal.

1. Brisbane City Council and its councillors need to accept that no large city has built its way out of congestion by building low-capacity motorways. Additional road lanes offer a throughput of about 2200 passengers/direction/hour/lane. This is well below what public transport options can achieve.

2. BCC is working with Translink to conduct a bus review.

We suggest:

- Route 359 serving Eatons Hill and Albany Creek along Old Northern and South Pine Roads should be upgraded to a BUZ service. Unbelievably, this bus service operates only hourly during weekdays.

- Route 350 also represents a major gap in the BUZ network, serving Beckett Rd and South Pine Rd, parallel to the North West Transport Corridor, and then along the under-serviced Musgrave Rd.

- For over a decade we have also called for a bus service to UQ Chancellors Place via Ashgrove and Enoggera, and reform of the Great Circle bus line. Council has sat on these ideas for the last 10 years.

Failure to reform the BCC bus network is a key reason why Northside residents drive - they have to!

3. T2 Transit lanes already exist on Kelvin Grove Road. BCC should look at extending these transit lanes up Enoggera Road, South Pine Road and Old Northern Road either in existing lanes or in new lanes.

4. BCC should look at allowing Brisbane Metro bus services to run off the busways. Brisbane Metro vehicles have been undertaking extensive testing on normal urban and suburban roads so we know that they can run on ordinary roads. We believe that these vehicles should not be limited to busway-only operation, and can be useful for running along main arterial roads as well.

5. Finally, surface busway options either in the median or side lanes of Kelvin Grove Rd, Enoggera Road, South Pine Road and Old Northern Road should be considered. This is similar to the proposal to run Brisbane Metro bus services up the centre of Gympie Road. We provide a video of the AMETI Eastern Busway in Auckland which gives an impression of what may be possible.

All of these measures complement developing rail on the Northside.

RAIL Back On Track urges Brisbane City Council and councillors to dedicate funding to improving Route 359 to BUZ standards, expand BCC's successful BUZ network programme, and consider expanding the Brisbane Metro bus network beyond existing busways. These are practical and achievable options that will cost a fraction of what the Northern Motorway toll road would cost.

Reference:

AMETI (Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative) - Eastern Busway, Auckland, New Zealand.



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

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