Article: Bruce Highway gridlock after Queen's Diamond Jubilee long weekend

[Fares_Fair]

Article: Bruce Highway gridlock after Queen's Diamond Jubilee long weekend
by: Kieran Rooney
From:The Courier-Mail
June 11, 2012 5:51 PM

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/bruce-highway-gridlock-at-beerwah-after-two-cars-overturn-in-crash/story-e6freoof-1226391181086

TRAFFIC on the Bruce Highway, heading south from the Sunshine Coast, has been brought to a crawl as Queenslanders flood back to Brisbane after the long weekend.

It has been reported the gridlock ran from Caloundra all the way to the Caboolture turn off at the D'Aguilar Highway.

A police spokesman said the rush was typical for the afternoon of a public holiday.

"No major accidents have happened in the last few hours that have stopped the flow of cars," he said.

"There may have been a minor bingle which slowed things down but nothing which police have had to attend to and direct traffic."

Congestion on the highway began early today after two cars crashed and rolled over at Beerwah about 11.50am.

One vehicle landing in a ditch on the northbound side but there were no serious injuries.

[ozbob]

It is very disappointing to consider the lack of support for our community at times when it could be of great benefit.  Additional holiday rail specials to the Sunshine Coast would be a great alternative to the road gauntlet for trauma,chaos and congestion.  No, lets have a track closure ...

[achiruel]

Yep, smartest idea ever.  Why not close a lesser-used line (say Shorncliffe) over a long weekend?
Or even Ferny Grove which while it gets decent patronage at least the bus times are quite so ridiculous as Caboolture.  I heard one report (unverified) of 80 minutes from Bowen Hills to Narangba!

[Fares_Fair]

One could reasonably expect the gridlock in part to be linked or exacerbated by the closure of the line and the slower replacement buses in place of the trains.

[p858snake]

Yep, smartest idea ever.  Why not close a lesser-used line (say Shorncliffe) over a long weekend?
Or even Ferny Grove which while it gets decent patronage at least the bus times are quite so ridiculous as Caboolture.  I heard one report (unverified) of 80 minutes from Bowen Hills to Narangba!

Shorn was closed over the long weekend.

AFAIK there was reports of over 2hrs along the CAB line somewhere on sat (QR was looking into that apparently, according to twitter).

[HappyTrainGuy]

Yep, smartest idea ever.  Why not close a lesser-used line (say Shorncliffe) over a long weekend?
Or even Ferny Grove which while it gets decent patronage at least the bus times are quite so ridiculous as Caboolture.  I heard one report (unverified) of 80 minutes from Bowen Hills to Narangba!

What most people I've seen don't seem to understand was just how much work that was needed to be carried out over that weekend closure. The closure was needed. The ballast condition at Northgate on the subs has been a real mess for quite a while (after heavy rain mud/dust was always left on the sleepers/ballast due to the water pooling). Because the whole track including balast was dug up and removed on the down sub the up main had to be closed for safety reasons/workers but mostly because there was a train stationed there to load the used dirt/ballast on to. The Down sub was also closed due to heavy vehicles positioned/crossing to access the dirt/sleepers/track/ballast that had been left there the week prior. That also meant trackside signals, cables between the platforms etc had to be removed and replaced. Due to the rain those works and the track instillation were slightly delayed. No electric trains were even able to go past due to the overheads being switched off for OH&S relating to the diggers in the area. The track would have been open to traffic on Monday but due to heavy rain on Saturday night and rain on Sunday works were slightly delayed in parts which had a roll on effect ie they couldn't do that part before that was done. All that prevent traffic from accessing Shorncliffe line which closed that line. The Sandgate platform works were delayed to fit into this schedule to prevent two closures to the Shorncliffe line. Moving on to the Caboolture line passengers were reccommended to change at Bowen Hills due to better bus access to the area compared to Eagle Junction/Wooloowin/Albion etc. Because train services both passenger and freight were very very limited other works were shifted into this same window. Strathpine level crossing was offline for a good portion of the weekend with all traffic diverted to the Kremzo road? overpass (The overpass on the Bald Hills side). Work went into fixing/removing the multiple 25-30kph? speed restrictions that are between Petrie-Strathpine. Big works for the new overpass between Lawnton-Bray Park also forced past of that closure to allow work trackside to go ahead. That prevented trains running Petrie-Virginia. Narangba had more platform/station works associated with the closure which enabled more work to progress that normally wouldn't have. That prevented trains running Caboolture-Petrie. I'm not too sure about the Caboolture-Gympie works but IIRC there were sections of track cut out and replaced along with some vegitation removal and general mtce/corridor works.

[Jonno]

One could reasonably expect the gridlock in part to be linked or exacerbated by the closure of the line and the slower replacement buses in place of the trains.

Doubt it!!! Ths happens despite the rail line's existence!!!  Road based transport system unable to extreme volumes!!!

[ozbob]

People understand that closures are necessary, it is the timing that is p%ssing off the masses.  Queens Birthday Weekend / Caboolture Show is not a good weekend to close the  Caboolture / Sunshine Coast line.  It just stuffs a lot of people around, sends the wrong signals to the community. 

[somebody]

HTG,
Yeah, more work could be done over the long weekend than a normal weekend.  What irks me besides the short notice (to be fixed) is that there is no advice about replacement buses.  In NSW even before they incorporated trackwork buses into the journey planner, at least they would tell you the stopping patterns, so you could infer the likely delay.

[achiruel]

The other thing is, being buses and having much lower capacity than the trains they replace, obviously they need multiple vehicles.  Why could some of these not follow express patterns, e.g. express Bowen Hills-Strathpine then all to Petrie, express Bowen Hills-Petrie then all to Caboolture, etc.  This would have some of the extremely long transit times experience by long suffering passengers.

[somebody]

The other thing is, being buses and having much lower capacity than the trains they replace, obviously they need multiple vehicles.  Why could some of these not follow express patterns, e.g. express Bowen Hills-Strathpine then all to Petrie, express Bowen Hills-Petrie then all to Caboolture, etc.  This would have some of the extremely long transit times experience by long suffering passengers.

Do we know that this wasn't done?

[ozbob]

They would had have a variety of patterns on the buses for sure.  A typical closure on the Ipswich line say Corinda to Ipswich will have some running express Corinda to Ipswich, some all stations to say Goodna then Express to Ipswich.  Some express to Goodna then all stations to Ipswich and so forth.  This aspect is done well.  It does help to reduce the journey time a bit.

[Arnz]

I can only speak for the arrangements on the Caboolture-Nambour leg, but there were 2 patterns over the weekend.
1. Caboolture-Nambour all-stops & v.v
2. Caboolture-Nambour express stopping only at Beerwah and Landsborough. (no Australia Zoo stop, passengers had to use Australia Zoo's own services).

[HappyTrainGuy]

They usually do have multiple running patterns. I don't know what the weekends pattern was but when Northgate-Petrie is offline its usually something like BA Virginia, Sunshine, Geebung drop off any other stops to Petrie. BB express to Zillmere, Carseldine, Bald Hills and drop off any to Petrie. BC express to Strathpine, Bray Park, Lawnton and Petrie. BD express to Petrie. When its Caboolture-Northgate its the same but just repeated and extended.

[Golliwog]

I've avoided the FG line during closures, but have used it a few times during closures on a Friday night to get home. In the outbound direction they split the line into 2 sections and you either got a bus that stopped at the stations from Bowen Hills to somewhere like Alderley/Enoggera, or one that did the other half of the line. I assume there must have been a 3rd bus that went all stations for those heading outbound trying to get between the 2 sets of stations.

[achiruel]

I'm only relying on second hand information, but a friend who was travelling to Narangba said all stations was the only option except for an express to Caboolture. In retrospect, back tracking from there might have been quicker.