Route 320 - time to upgrade?

[aldonius]

Every time I look at the Brisbane development map, I can't help but think that St Paul's Terrace ought to have a frequent bus along it. Currently it is served by the 320 and the 301.

North of Eagle Junction there's also an obvious gap in the frequent grid which an upgraded 320 would fill.

Between EJ and Bowen Hills however it's the definition of bus-train redundant parallelism. I don't think that can really be helped though.

Some numbers: in April 2019, there were about 230 outbound 320s with about 12,000 boardings, for about 53 boardings per service.
By way of comparison, that month the 385 had about 42 boardings/service, the 333 about 67 boardings/service, and the 300 (which IMHO is long overdue for BUZification) did 74 boardings/service.

[Cazza]

I feel like a new Sandgate Rd BUZ (running from Carseldine to the City via Taigum and Sandgate Rd) would be better suited to cater for this area. The role of the 320 should be more of an Eagle Junction feeder, with anything south just to improve the coverage down Bonney Ave and then to be another service for people down St Pauls Tce.

I also don't think that Wavell Heights is in desperate need of a BUZ service. Upgrade the current 320 to a consistent 30 min frequency Off-Peak and Weekends, then throw in a cross town feeder to Toombul (running along pretty much the same route as the 320 between Chermside and Shaw Rd) at the same frequency and bam. There's your combined 15 min frequency, providing options to both Eagle Junc./City and Toombul respectively.

[Cazza]

For interest:

[Paul B]

time for a bunch of hourly routes to go from hourly (unusable) to half hourly (crap) by being feederized
eg 110,334,325,310

[SurfRail]

The system is such a mess I don't think there's a point pushing for route by route reforms, but that's just me.

They need to break the system into separate contract regions which each have allocated resources, so they can quarantine delays and other operational problems and so it makes it easier to implement changes area by area without unwinding related timetables on the other side of town.

[Gazza]

Could you route the KSD city Gilder via St Pauls terrace?

[STB]

The system is such a mess I don't think there's a point pushing for route by route reforms, but that's just me.

They need to break the system into separate contract regions which each have allocated resources, so they can quarantine delays and other operational problems and so it makes it easier to implement changes area by area without unwinding related timetables on the other side of town.

Realistically that will never happen.  Brisbane City Council unlike other cities is like a mini state government unto itself - any changes or threat to BCC's set up would be political poison to any side of politics (thanks to those in 1925 who thought having one council only to deal with the growth of Brisbane was a good idea - and back before public transport was a state matter).

I think the only real option available to any network changes is doing it on a sub regional level, whereby you keep it as local as possible to not cause revolt from the voters (like Mount Ommaney - although I think that network review didn't go far enough, and it seems the people down there are generally happy with the network provided even though it fails to link in with the nearby rail network). 

Honestly I find Brisbanites to be greatly averse to interchanging between services compared to outer regions, probably why it doesn't happen on the scale compared to the outer regions of Brisbane or even other cities.  I remember having a conversation with some people about interchanging between services and their response is frankly they don't trust the system to have effective interchanging and that it would cause undue stress on themselves if they had to interchange aka they would just go back to driving knowing they had complete control over their travel.

[STB]

I feel like a new Sandgate Rd BUZ (running from Carseldine to the City via Taigum and Sandgate Rd) would be better suited to cater for this area. The role of the 320 should be more of an Eagle Junction feeder, with anything south just to improve the coverage down Bonney Ave and then to be another service for people down St Pauls Tce.

I also don't think that Wavell Heights is in desperate need of a BUZ service. Upgrade the current 320 to a consistent 30 min frequency Off-Peak and Weekends, then throw in a cross town feeder to Toombul (running along pretty much the same route as the 320 between Chermside and Shaw Rd) at the same frequency and bam. There's your combined 15 min frequency, providing options to both Eagle Junc./City and Toombul respectively.

My personal opinion on the area - I'd probably look at diverting existing route 320 to Toombul and run it as a crosstown service with bus/rail connections at Eagle Junction.  And I'd also create a new route to cover the existing 320 south of Toombul but originating from Toombul instead of Chermside.  I'd also look at having a Sandgate Rd BUZ connecting in with RBWH with those north of Toombul having local routes terminating at Toombul (ie: routes 306/322), those living in Banyo, Nudgee etc, certainly don't need a 1 bus journey to the city when there's a train service nearby.

[SurfRail]

Honestly I find Brisbanites to be greatly averse to interchanging between services compared to outer regions, probably why it doesn't happen on the scale compared to the outer regions of Brisbane or even other cities.  I remember having a conversation with some people about interchanging between services and their response is frankly they don't trust the system to have effective interchanging and that it would cause undue stress on themselves if they had to interchange aka they would just go back to driving knowing they had complete control over their travel.

I think they need to bite the bullet and just do it.  If 40% of the passenger base goes back to their cars, who cares as long as they get replaced by more people using public transport on the whole?

It's all a numbers game.  The existing dynamics do very little for patronage growth and are fully susceptible to fuel getting cheaper and other factors.  Need to tip over the whole cart the way it happened on the Gold Coast and in other parts of the region (like Auckland).

[aldonius]

Could you route the KSD city Gilder via St Pauls terrace?

Possible, but not particularly efficiently IMHO. It'd have to go via Allison St or Montpelier Rd.