Is it time for a complete bus rewite

[#Metro]

I would not damn TransLink. Public Transport in this city is the best it has ever been, certainly so much better than the rubbish in 2004!

[SurfRail]

I would not damn TransLink. Public Transport in this city is the best it has ever been, certainly so much better than the rubbish in 2004!

Agreed.  But, I don't think TransLink is the same organisation it used to be. 

They are the best placed to perform a major rewrite (it is their network obviously) but they are poorly equipped.  They need outside experience and an injection of world's best practice.  If that means whole-sale replacement of staff or massively increasing the amount of consulting engagements, then so be it.  I would love to see Jarrett get his teeth stuck into our network - he already has familiarity with it after all.

What I would really like to see is TransLink being a business unit of a Queensland Transit Authority rather than a statutory authority in its own right.  QTA would take over responsibility for all planning and service delivery in Queensland.  Currently there is a bizarre disconnect between the Passenger Transport Division in DTMR and TransLink for the south-east, which does not exist in most other jurisdictions like us (eg WA).

[Mr X]

I would not damn TransLink. Public Transport in this city is the best it has ever been, certainly so much better than the rubbish in 2004!

For a lot of the city, yes definitely. Before TL, could you even transition between QR and BT services without paying extra?

[dwb]

Segrate Melbourne St into two different forms of transport, cars on one side, trams on the other. Follow down Boundary Street to 199 route (or go via Montague Rd.. but should at least service Boundary St). Just depends where future development will be.

I am talking the trams we see in Melbourne ->



Or perhaps larger. On street running through the quieter streets of West End shouldn't be an issue I think.

We used to have trams through West End, did we not?

Hi Happy Bus User, sorry in the delay in replying, I've been trying to think how to best express myself and how to best ask you the questions as to the service qualities and cost implications of your thinking. What I would strongly recommend is considering the difference between "trams" (aka street running light rail with closely spaced stops, street cars, what you've called 'light rail') and what some other people call "light rail" (I'm thinking the sense that most people on this forum use it)... which is more like DLR in London or Skytrain in Vancouver - more of a metropolitan/ fully grade separated, rapid, frequent and mass transit option (also variably known as metro-rail) with stops probably closer than heavy rail, but further apart than trams.

To add to the confusion, Americans, Canadians, the Brits and Aussies all mix up various terms, and often the same name refers to vastly different services.

I would strongly advocate for true (grade separated) "light rail"/"metro-rail" in Brisbane, but I think in the meantime we can achieve (with buses in preference to trams) a ramping up of public benefit in terms of capacity, frequency and reliability to a greater proportion of Brisbane/SEQ at a lower cost. What I mean to say is trams are very expensive and only give you basic bus qualities + perhaps greater comfort and legibility (but not frequency, nor reliability, nor capacity). In my mind if we're going to outlay significant cost, we need to make sure it delivers frequency, reliability and capacity, as well as comfort.

A recent planning project in Brisbane (that was unfortunately delayed by the flood enquiry) that strongly advocated for light rail (metro style) in Brisbane was the River City Blueprint project - you can still read about it at www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/rivercityblueprint There are also fantastic resources (ppts etc) from the public forum where the project looked deeply into this connectivity/mobility issue and looks at mode comparisons still available on the project website and hosted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/34239150/Connected-City-River-City-Blueprint-Forum

Further, as Surfrail has referenced "Jarrett", you may also like to read the Human Transit blog at www.humantransit.org/. It is written by a guy named Jarrett Walker and has some great articles about the differing qualities and names of various types of urban transit. He's a bus nut, a tram nut, a rapid transit driverless nut and everything in between and works really hard to promote transit planners and advocates alike, to really think beyond mode when thinking about transit and to think about the objectives and desired outcomes.

I really hope that is helpful to you and others, and only wish the Greens would engage with some transit people and some of the thinking I've referenced about and evolve their thinking beyond simply replicating the 1965 Brisbane tramway system at great public cost, disruption and little (capacity, reliability, speed etc) benefit.

[#Metro]

At the bare minimum, any rapid transit must be

- in Class B ROW or higher
- have stop spacing > 500m