Richlands to Springfield Central - Stage 2

[Gazza]

My only suggestion, in due course, would be put the hard word on the local authority and shopping centre owner to improve access from the railway station to the shopping cente itself.

In what way?

I thought the access was quite nice...Very shady with all those ornamental ponds and bridges.

[SteelPan]

ornamental ponds and bridges???

:conf

lol... all I was doing was walking along hot footpath...maybe should have tried the other end of the platform 

[SurfRail]

It wouldn't surprise me if there is some pressure over time to get the line extended to Redbank Plains purely to get the parking sorted out.  After all, that is the only effective reason why Varsity Lakes was built (albeit due to stadium events at Robina rather than lack of parking generally).

[ozbob]

From Quest South West News 16th January 2014 page 14

Patrons get on board new transport option

[ozbob]

From the Queensland Times click here!

Thousands flock to Springfield trains and leave cars at home

Thousands flock to Springfield trains and leave cars at home
Kieran Banks 31st Jan 2014 4:00 AM

COMMUTERS have supported the fledgling Springfield train line by touching on their Go Cards by the thousands, with nearly 85,000 trips logged since it began operation.

Figures released by TransLink indicate 49,000 trips were registered in December, with a further 36,000 to January 23.

A Queensland Rail spokesperson said the strong patronage figures come on top of positive feedback from commuters.

"Patronage demand at Richlands has eased with more customers choosing to board at the new Springfield and Springfield Central stations," a Queensland Rail spokesperson said.

"Overall public transport patronage in the region has increased which indicates that more people are deciding to leave the car at home.

"Station staff continue to receive very positive feedback about station facilities and the 42-minute trip time from Springfield Central to Brisbane's Central station."

Commuter advocacy group Rail Back on Track spokesman Robert Dow said the figures were an encouraging sign.

"I've been out a couple of times over the December and January period and it was always getting well used. With the Orion shopping centre expansion I think it's going to be a gold mine," he said.

"The real test will come when university starts again."

The Queensland Rail spokesperson said the 400-bay permanent car park at Springfield Central train station was on track to be completed by early March.

An interim 300-bay temporary car park has been in use since December while the permanent car park is being built.

The Springfield line timetable delivers trains every six to 12 minutes in the morning peak and every 12 minutes in the afternoon peak.

There are plenty of services at the weekend as well with consistent 30-minute departures on Saturdays and 10am to 10.30pm on Sundays.

For more information or to plan your journey, visit the website translink.com.au or phone 13 12 30, anytime.

[ozbob]

Some photographs at Springfield Central.

Park and ride getting closer to completion









Around Springfield Central station



























Photographs R Dow 12th February 2014

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> Station to get 200 car parks on Monday and 400 by March

[ozbob]

Queensland Rail

The first 200 spaces in the new permanent car park at Springfield Central station opened this morning, with the rest of the car park on track for completion next month.

--> https://www.facebook.com/QueenslandRail/posts/10100425752385739

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> Orion says go on $154m stage two

THE stars have aligned for work to begin on the Orion Shopping Centre's $154 million second stage.

Mirvac's Orion Centre opened with much fanfare more than five years ago and the promise then was that stage two of the project would start in just a few years.

A downturn in the economy played against the centre and future development was put on hold as some tenants struggled to survive.

An influx of more residents into the growth corridor, the completion of the Springfield Central rail line and new road links have all contributed to re-energising Orion.

Another key factor for Mirvac signing off on the new stage was the commitment by Events Cinemas to build a 2000-seat complex featuring eight screens, two of which will be gold class.

Centre manager at Orion Springfield Central, Melanie Hodge, said the vision for Orion was for it to be a true "town centre" destination not just a great shopping centre ...

More --> http://www.qt.com.au/news/orion-says-go-on-154m-stage-two-jobs-and-shops-for/2206714/

[Jonno]

Ah Urban Design Queensland Style



Leading Practice Urban Design

[SurfRail]

Try comparing like with like if you want some credibility.  I doubt there are too many Swarovski stores out on the lower density urban fringes of most European cities either.

If you were trying to assert something about Canberra or place like Southport (which do have excessive amounts of surface car parking in the CBD) then you would have a point.

[Jonno]

Honestly? Yes it was the store that I was trying to highlight as a majority Swarovski shareholder!!

Brent Toderian (ex-Vancouver Chief Planner) just spoke at the Austrslian Planning Insitute Conference

Here are a couple of articles he highlighted recently

Our "Can't Be Done" attitude means we are not even trying and will be left behind by cities around the world

http://www.planetizen.com/node/67761

Mid-Rise: Density at a Human Scale

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - 6:00am PDT by
ROBERT FREEDMAN
Architecture, Urban Development, Ontario

All growing cities must find ways to develop at appropriate, transit-supporting densities without overwhelming the surrounding context. The human-scaled, mid-rise building can be a solution—but achieving a good neighbourhood "fit" is not easy.
Quadrangle Architects / Used by Permission
(Updated 03-17-14) I had the great privilege of living in Manhattan for two years in the early 1990s while I was studying and working in New York. After weeks of searching I found a small apartment in Kips Bay, on the fourth floor of a classic New York walk-up. I was drawn to the neighborhood not only because I could afford it—barely—but also because of its comfortable, human scale. After a day spent working among the glass and brick towers of Midtown—I would walk home and feel part of a neighbourhood. The scale was comfortable, the sidewalks were sunny and I could find everything I needed—from bagels and pizza to dental floss, dry cleaning, draught beer and pocket parks—all within a five-minute walk of my front door.

My building was a solid brick walk-up—like thousands of apartments from that era—built after legislation had put an end to the worst tenement housing. Though small, my place had two large, double-hung windows in the main room for light—and light-wells in the kitchen and bathroom—which provided a much needed cross-breeze in the summer. These buildings had no elevators—not because they hadn't been invented—but rather because they were too expensive for everyday housing. Without an elevator they were typically constructed to a height of four or five (sometimes six) stories, in direct relation to how many flights of stairs people were willing to climb. Anyone who has regularly carried bags of groceries (and a bike) up four flights of stairs will attest to the upper limits of human mobility.

Like many things in the design of cities, when you let the limits of human movement dictate size and proportions, the scale begins to feel human. No surprise there. In areas of Manhattan where entire blocks of walk-up apartments have been preserved, the human scale provides an amazing and welcome contrast to the soaring, elevator-towers that cover much of the rest of the island. You immediately sense how the heights of the buildings are in harmony with the width of the street. The materials are warm and natural, and, on the Avenues and major streets, the sidewalks are lined with small shops and restaurants. While walking, you have the sense that you "fit." It's not unlike retrieving your jacket after having mistakenly slipped into someone else's that was several sizes too large. It just feels right. I remember wondering at the time—would it be possible to replicate this feeling in other cities? We're no longer building elevator-less, brick walk-ups, but I was convinced that regardless of architectural styles it would be possible to create that comfortable human scale in a contemporary setting.

Fast-forward ten years and I'm back to my hometown as the director of urban design for the city of Toronto. The ink is barely dry on the city's new Official Plan, and already critics are attacking the new Avenues Policy. As one articulate critic stated, "Trying to recreate European-style Avenues lined with cheek-by-jowl, mid rise buildings along Toronto's commercial Avenues is the triumph of bureaucratic wishful (read 'delusional') thinking over common sense." Despite the clever quip, I think the Avenues Policy makes a great deal of practical sense in Toronto, where we are grappling with rapid population growth and a need to create density along our existing and proposed higher-order-transit streets.

With very strict rules in place to protect our "stable, single-family, residential neighbourhoods," the only place to build denser, mixed-use buildings is in our Downtown, the Centres and along the Avenues. Developers have been more than happy to continue building high-rise condominium towers wherever they are permitted, but in general, tall buildings are not allowed adjacent to neighbourhoods. We arrived at mid-rise, as a more modest form of density that both residents and developers could accept—if not embrace. It turned out that building mid-rise on the Avenues was a more difficult challenge than anticipated, and I was very eager to find ways to make it work.

Despite the city's desire to encourage mid-rise development, the reality was that not many developers wanted to build them. When pressed they offered three main reasons. First, the cost of land is prohibitive. Toronto's overheated real estate market, combined with small lot sizes along many Avenues, have made it increasingly difficult for developers to assemble the parcel size needed to create a viable mid-rise building (roughly 30 meters width by 30 to 50 meters depth, depending on the width of the Avenue). Second,developers argue that to gain approval for a mid-rise building involves as much, if not more, time, effort and expense as an application for a tall building—without the potential financial return. Finally, the Avenues run through or along the edges of Toronto's single-family residential neighbourhoods. Residents of those neighbourhoods are often very concerned about how mid-rise buildings will affect them. On the commercial side, they fear that the street will become an "unwelcoming dark canyon" and that small mom-and-pop shops will be replaced by large, blank-walled banks and drug stores. On the neighbourhood side, they worry about the loss of privacy once windows and balconies loom over their back yards and shadow their gardens.

There wasn't much we could do about the price of land, but we thought that by creating a set of comprehensive mid-rise performance standards we might strike the right balance between the concerns of both developers and adjacent residents. The developers typically want to increase the building size to achieve the density required to make the project viable—while the area residents want to scale the building back to ensure that it doesn't overwhelm the neighbourhood character.

We assembled an urban design and planning group, headed by Lorna Day, and hired a consultant team (BMI along with ERA, Quadrangle and UMC). During the many months that we worked on the mid-rise initiative, I drew inspiration from my time in New York. When reviewing a performance standard, I often thought about whether it would help to create the same ambience I had found in my Kips Bay neighbourhood. The Mid-Rise Design Standards (Standards) contain over 30 individual standards—many of then aimed at getting three critical things right: height, step backs (front and rear) and the relationship between the building and the Avenue.

By far the most contentious issue was height. Prior to the Guidelines there had been no definition of what constituted a mid-rise. To arrive at a definition we analyzed a number of successful mid-rise streets from around the world and found a correlation between street width and building height—a ratio of approximately 1:1 or less. The buildings are roughly as tall as the street is wide. When lined up side-by-side these buildings create a streetwall. When streetwalls face each other along both sides of an Avenue they create an "outdoor room" or defined space. It's the proportion of that space that creates the distinct mid-rise ambience. Again, it just feels right. This realization led us to define a mid-rise building in Toronto as a building (greater than four stories) that can rise up to, but no higher than, the width of the adjacent right-of-way.

The performance standards concerning building step-backs (front and rear) were created to deal with issues of sunlight, privacy, overlook and human scale. When we tested the 1:1 ratio with drawings and models (and even a few actual buildings) we realized that it was working well on Avenues of up to about 24 meters because the resulting structures were roughly walk-up height (around seven stories or less). However, on the wider Avenues, the buildings began to feel oversized, and the human scale was lost. We dealt with this issue in two ways. First, we introduced a "pedestrian perception stepback" that recommends stepping the building back at least 3 meters anywhere between the third and the sixth stories. When walking along the sidewalk, the pedestrian feels that the street-wall is at a walk-up scale—even though after the step-back the building might rise to the maximum height of 1:1. Second, we formulated performance standards that addressed not only the scale issue but also the overlapping issue of sunlight on the sidewalks. At Toronto's latitude, the 1:1 height casts unacceptable shadows on the sidewalks in the fair weather months, even when the sun is relatively high in the sky (between March 21 and September 21). We reviewed sunlight studies and concluded that sunlight required an angular plane of approximately 45 degrees (measured from the opposite property line) to reach the sidewalk during the seasons and times of day when people are most likely to be out walking. (Measured from the development's own property line, this translates into a maximum height equal to 80 percent of the right-of way width before a 45-degree angular plane is needed to reach the full 1:1 height.)

At the back of the buildings, our drawing and model testing revealed that a 1:1 ratio can produce uncomfortable overlook and privacy issues (depending on the depth of the lot). To deal with these issues, a 45-degree angular plane is drawn—either from the rear property line, or the mid-line of a rear lane. The 45-degree plane both reduces the building height and steps it away from adjacent backyards or side yards. Where there are very shallow lots, the rear angular plane may result in a building that cannot achieve the 1:1 ratio. An alternative way to deal with these issues (but only permitted where there is both resident and political support) is to allow the developer to purchase adjacent properties and create an "enhancement zone," which becomes a buffer between the mid-rise building and its neighbours. The houses in the enhancement zone may be left in place or removed to make way for underground parking, rear lanes, landscaping as well as new houses or townhouses. The mid-rise building, now surrounded by this buffer zone, is free to rise to a height of 1:1.

In addition to height and step-backs, the other crucial mid-rise issue is the relationship of the building to the street. In Toronto, buildings on relatively narrow lots line the older commercial corridors, with small shops below (each with individual entrances and display windows) and apartments above. Adjacent sidewalks are narrow (often as a result of earlier road-widenings to make more room for cars). Despite the narrow sidewalks, it's an attractive, human-scale pattern with many individual buildings, side-by-side, forming a staccato streetwall. By contrast, the mid-rise buildings going up today tend to be on much larger, wider lots. As a result, many of these buildings appear monolithic—spreading themselves down the street in long, horizontal lines. In addition, the newer mid-rise buildings (for a number of reasons) tend to attract large retailers like banks, fast food restaurants and drug marts that have few entrances, blank walls or blocked windows—all of which make the street much less lively for pedestrians.

To ensure that new mid-rise buildings engage the street, we came up with several performance standards that address the need for careful design of the building façade and adjacent sidewalks. These include "build-to lines" to create both a street-wall and adequate sidewalk width; the addition of vertical elements to create a rhythm along the street; frequent, clear entrances from the sidewalk; transparent facades (60 percent to limit blank walls) and a minimum floor-to-ceiling height of 4.5 meters (to ensure quality, retail and restaurant space). Even in parts of the city where retail is not currently feasible, the standards encourage the design of ground floor residential units that can be easily converted to retail in the future (done simply by creating a transition from public sidewalk to private unit through setbacks and landscaping rather than the traditional raised ground floor residential).

The city has been using the Mid-Rise Design Standards for several years, and for the most part the feedback has been positive. The Standards create a clear picture of the city's expectations for mid-rise developers and their design teams. In addition, city staff in all divisions, and the Design Review Panel, can be consistent across the city in development review comments. There have been some recent criticisms of the way city staff apply the document—treating it like a strict set of rules. The Standards should not be seen as a checklist or a set of hard and fast rules. But the Standards are also not a starting point for bargaining and negotiations. This kind of discourse ultimately helps the city fine-tune the document to meet the needs of all users. Ultimately, buildings should be reviewed to assess whether, on balance, the proposal meets the spirit of the entire document.

The critics who suggested that the mid-rise buildings and Avenues policies were misguided have been proven wrong. Slowly, many developers, big and small, have come to embrace them, and residents are finding that buildings they once opposed have become welcome additions to their neighbourhoods. Interestingly, one street, Sheppard Avenue West (from west of Bathurst to Dufferin Street) is well on its way to transforming from a sleepy stretch of bungaloes into a double-sided, "cheek-by-jowl" mid-rise Avenue. I took a walk the down that street a couple of weeks ago—on a frigid but sunny weekday afternoon. It felt surreal. I was in the midst of an astonishing metamorphosis. Who would have believed that in just over a decade, a suburban arterial road could emerge as an urban thoroughfare? A surprising number of people were out on the generous sidewalks, and some of the retail was starting to thrive. It felt good, but I couldn't help making the comparison. Was it like my old New York neighbourhood? Truthfully—not really...at least not yet. But I must admit that I did feel encouraged.

This is not wishful thinking. We're building Avenues of mid-rises, which bode very well, not just for Toronto, but also for any city trying to increase its density without losing its human scale.

http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=9564513

VANCOUVER — Hear the term "High Street" and you'll likely envision the main business street of a city, teeming with shoppers scurrying from store to store in a bustling, open-air, pedestrian-friendly environment.

The tree-lined street has restaurants, cafes, bars and probably a public plaza where people can socialize and take a break from their busy day.

It's an outdoor image through and through.

Today, indoor shopping centres have embraced the High Street concept en masse to inject life into malls searching for an effective new way to entice consumers.

Metro Vancouver malls such as Oakridge, Park Royal, Brentwood, Lougheed and others have ambitious plans to create more outdoor streetfront retailing options for shoppers who used to prefer the cosy confines of enclosed shopping centres.

"People like the feel of a busy street with shops and activity flowing onto the street — there's comfort in that," said Shape Properties executive vice-president Darren Kwiatkowski. "Indoor malls have been around a long time and they can be very inward-looking and single-purpose. It's time for a fresh look."

Shape has huge redevelopment plans for Brentwood, the central Burnaby mall that has had several facelifts since opening in 1961.

The latest upgrade — to cost up to $1 billion when fully completed — will amount to a total body makeover and open-air retailing plays a significant role in the new look.

Surface parking will shift underground so people arriving by SkyTrain can walk straight into a one-acre public plaza filled with trees, lined with shops and flanked by two highrise residential towers.

Total retail space in the shopping centre will climb from 550,000 square feet to one million square feet when Phase 1 of the project is finished by late 2017. Longer-term plans call for 1.3 million square feet of retail space, 11 residential towers and two office towers.

Kwiatkowski said the project reflects the growing trend to urbanization — with transit access, a mixture of indoor and outdoor retailing and high-density housing creating a more sustainable town centre.

"Brentwood isn't downtown Vancouver but it's very central to the region," he said.

SFU Community Trust president Gordon Harris, an urban planner overseeing the development of the UniverCity community on Burnaby Mountain, said new outdoor retailing projects can fit in well with high-density, mixed-use developments.

"Many of these sites are located next door to spectacular urban transit so the idea is to put in a mix of uses — particularly residential — in high-transit service corridors," he said. "We're building town centres on what used to be auto-oriented shopping centre sites."

Vancouver retail consultant David Ian Gray feels developers and city planners are driving the open-air retailing trend more than consumers and retailers.

"When it's done right, it's set up for a shopper who wants a more leisurely experiential shopping trip but not everybody wants that," said the DIG360 founder. "Streetfront retail has always been popular. This is just more manufactured — a little more Disneyesque."

But Gray agrees many shoppers want a change as they find enclosed malls to be "mind-numbing."

"They can make them a little more interesting by adding fountains and other features but it's still stale air and artificial lighting," he said.

New residential towers often complement new open-air retailing projects and Form Retail Advisors principal Derick Fluker feels those towers are the real driver behind the High Street retailing trend.

"A lot of retail development is driven by the condos above and they don't know what else to do with the main floor," he said. "Ninety-nine times out of 100, developers are wondering how to create the nicest retail experience to help sell the condos. In some ways, there's more retail being built than the market is actually demanding."

Fluker said fashion retailers typically do best in an enclosed-mall environment, noting one of Lululemon's most successful stores is in West Edmonton Mall. But Lululemon and Aritzia — another successful Vancouver-based fashion chain — both operate outdoor streetfront stores in Park Royal.

Lululemon likes the "creative leeway" outdoor locations often provide when it comes to designing storefront exteriors and providing extra amenities.

"Our storefront exterior designs often reflect the community we are joining and become the subject of curiosity, which in turn, leads to future shoppers of our brand," Lululemon vice-president of store development Wynn Spencer said in an email response to questions.

He noted its Burlington, Vt., location used two gondolas to create an eye-catching and locally-relevant storefront in a strong ski community, while its Tulsa, Okla., store offers outdoor community yoga classes on a rooftop patio.

Spencer said it makes sense to have an indoor mall location in Edmonton because of the city's extremely cold winters. But stores in enclosed malls can sometimes be restricted to traditional mall hours, which can work against Lululemon's free run groups and in-store yoga classes.

A new open-air designer outlet mall will open near Vancouver International Airport next year on a 12-hectare site next to a Canada Line station. U.K.-based developer McArthurGlen Group promises luxury piazzas, pedestrian-friendly walkways and tree-lined streets in a shopping centre that will likely feature high-end brand names such as Prada, Armani and Burberry.

McArthurGlen operates 20 outlet centres throughout Europe and 17 of them are open-air malls.

"We think open-air shopping is more pleasant and relaxing than being in an enclosed mall," McArthurGlen North American development director Joan Jove said in an interview. "We want outlet shopping to be different than conventional shopping, to be more of an experience and a day out."

The new outlet centre will also feature a large fountain and a covered, open-air children's playground. Jove knows it rains a lot in Vancouver but noted his company operates successful outdoor retail centres in northern Europe, where it is also very rainy.

"Even when it rains, many people still come to the open-air centre because they have umbrellas, there are awnings and there's protection inside the stores," he said.

Jove said it costs less to build and operate an open-air shopping centre because less enclosed space leads to lower heating and air conditioning costs throughout the year.

Park Royal Shopping Centre vice-president Rick Amantea agrees costs are lower with outdoor centres but feels the savings are not as substantial as one might think, because it can be expensive to provide the right outdoor amenities — such as lighting, public art, quality landscaping and water features.

Park Royal opened Canada's first open-air "lifestyle centre" — Village at Park Royal — nearly 10 years ago.

"We don't walk into these things because they offer huge money savings," Amantea said. "What you don't spend to roof and enclose and provide heating and lighting, you spend on outdoor improvements if you do it properly."

The original Village at Park Royal had 250,000 square feet of retail space but a recent expansion has added about 150,000 square feet of space, including Aritizia's new 7,000-square-foot store.

Like many other malls, Park Royal wants to add more residential development over time, including two new towers — 24 storeys and 19 storeys — it hopes to build over the next two to three years.

"Having more residential on site drives the opportunity for us to become less of a regional shopping centre and more of a neighbourhood centre," Amantea said.

The open-air retailing, public-plaza concept plays a major role in the proposed redevelopment of Oakridge, which envisions a doubling of retail space and 13 residential towers to accommodate about 4,500 new residents.

Stantec Architecture senior principal Darren Burns, who helped design the ambitious project, said a renewed focus on outdoor retailing and outdoor public spaces should provide new opportunities for Oakridge tenants.

"From a retailing perspective, you're looking at the possibility of extending your hours and having restaurants and entertainment activities that otherwise wouldn't occur in a solely interior environment," he said.

Amantea said the open-air retailing trend has forced Park Royal to change its thinking about how it provides a more "customer-centric experiential environment."

"We have to think less like enclosed shopping centre people and more like streetfront retailers," he said. "It's part of our DNA now."

[Jonno]

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/06/transit-might-not-be-essential-transit-oriented-development/5851/

'Transit' Might Not Be Essential to Transit-Oriented Development
ERIC JAFFEJUN 10, 2013COMMENTS

The first thing that comes to mind with transit-oriented development, and sometimes the only thing, is proximity to a busy rail station. The term begins with transit for a reason. But of course that's not the only component of effective TOD: density, a mixture of residences and services, walkability, and the general built environment all play key roles. What if some of these other factors proved as important as rail proximity when it came to TOD's sustainable impact?

In other words, what if TOD doesn't rely on the T?

That was the question asked by planner Daniel Chatman of the University of California-Berkeley for a study published in the winter 2013 issue of Journal of the American Planning Association. His answer may come as a bit of a surprise. Chatman found that proximity to rail was not the essential TOD element it's typically thought to be — and, in fact, that it's importance vanished in the face of other factors:

In these data, the lower auto ownership and use in TODs is not from the T (transit), or at least, not from the R (rail), but from lower on- and off-street parking availability; better bus service; smaller and rental housing; more jobs, residents, and stores within walking distance; proximity to downtown; and higher subregional employment density.

Chatman reached his conclusions after analyzing the areas around 10 rail stations in New Jersey. Using self-report household surveys and on-site area observations, Chatman collected information on station proximity, parking availability, and local bus stops and grocery stores. He added Census and general research on housing age, commute time to Manhattan, and population, retail and employment density.

What if TOD doesn't rely on the T?

After modeling all the material, Chatman found that transit-oriented development did indeed have a positive impact on several measures of car dependency. When he drilled deeper into what TOD elements were most responsible for this benefit, however, proximity to rail didn't carry its expected weight.

Take car ownership. Chatman found that it was 27 percent lower per capita in new housing near a rail station compared to new housing far from one. But once he controlled for housing type (rented or owned), neighborhood parking, and area bus stops, the significance of the rail station disappeared. Rail proximity was no longer linked to car ownership; instead, the scarcity of off-street parking was a powerful predictor.

Same thing with car commuting and car trips to the grocery store. Before controlling for other variables, Chatman found that each mile away from a rail station increased a household's odds of driving to work by 74 percent. Likewise, before considering the controls, he found more weekly car trips to the store with every mile from the station a household was located.

But in the face of housing type and parking and built environment, the significance of rail once again slipped away. Off-street parking, job density, bus stop prevalence, and distance to Manhattan were stronger links to car commuting. Similarly, supermarkets within a quarter mile of one's home reduced car trips to the store, and scarce neighborhood parking cut them by a quarter.

So transit-oriented development does indeed seem to reduce car use, concludes Chatman, but that benefit may not have as much to do with proximity to a rail station as most people presume. Other factors — from parking to mixed-use development — may have just as valuable a role. On the whole, writes Chatman, the data suggest that rail's role here is an "indirect" one at best.

The results may be a little jarring, but Chatman actually sees them as encouraging. After all, developable area around rail stations is limited. If factors other than rail proximity can be emphasized and still produce decreases in car reliance, then the spirit of TOD can extend far beyond the T, he writes. At the very least, recognizing a potential limited role of rail proximity should remind planners that there's much more to the TOD job:

Current sustainability policies are often quite focused on investing in rail and developing housing near rail stations. ... Such a focus primarily on TODs to reduce greenhouse gases could miss the boat. These results suggest that a better strategy in many urban areas would be to incentivize housing developments of smaller rental units with lower on- and off-street parking availability, in locations with better bus service and higher subregional employment density.

Now it's important to remember that there are many variables in play here and their relationships are all extremely complicated. Until the results are replicated in other areas, and perhaps with a more consummate car use metric like vehicle miles traveled, the finding is probably more intriguing than game-changing. So it may not be time to remove the T from TOD quite yet, but it seems worthwhile to reconsider whether or not it's truly a capital letter.

[Jonno]

http://m.afr.com/Page/Uuid/b2efd8ca-ae76-11e3-93d6-7fe2df1d99d6?articleGift=TRUE

Freeways don't solve city traffic woes
Rebecca Thistleton - 20 Mar 2014 00:15:00

No city ever solved traffic problems with more freeways, says prominent planner Brent Toderian.

Vancouver's former chief planner said freeways "lobotomised" cities, pointing to Sydney's Cahill Expressway, which runs above Circular Quay.

"At least your barrier has a train associated with it . . . our city connects with the water, we have no barriers, but would have if we said yes to this kind of infrastructure," he said.

At the Planning Institute of Australia's annual conference in Sydney on Tuesday, Mr Toderian said ­allowing people to move around easily between home and work was one of the most important factors of good land-use planning. "We never built freeways in the first place, so we never had to have ­discussions about tearing them down like so many other cities have," he said.

Vancouver's planning system is regarded as one of the world's best, and the NSW planning white paper released in 2012 drew from its success. Mr Toderian is a strongly spoken advocate of density – as long as it is done well, and he discussed the need for high-quality development over high quantity. He pointed to the abundance of research which showed the physical, environmental and economic benefits of well-planned urban density.

'A lot of bad density'

Regardless of a city's size, the way it is planned for its population can make ­billions of dollars difference in ­productivity, he said.

"You have to acknowledge there is a lot of bad density out there, a lot of tall towers that were poorly done, never should have been allowed by the city.

"Then the community points at them and says, 'if that's what you're talking about, we're never supporting density, we're never supporting tall towers', and yet there are plenty of other tall towers that have been done very well," Mr Toderian said.

Building to maximise returns ­without accounting for livability was counterproductive and built opposition towards density, he said. "You will never get far talking about density by threatening things people love."

Mr Toderian believes the success or failure of a city depends on how well its suburbs work.

Minimising sprawl essential

He said minimising sprawl is also essential as cities grow. "Suburbia does not have to equate to sprawl . . . if you're designing your ­suburbs to be auto-dependant, that is sprawl."

Mr Toderian is working on plans for Parramatta and said it was important for that area to encourage density ­without creating "vertical sprawl" – high-rise towers that are still in the ­middle of car-dependant areas.

Allowing easier access to public transport by improving bus ­connections and creating bike lanes was one way to better connect higher density areas.

Vancouver's bus system was the "bedrock" of its planning and transport system as predictable buses made ­public transport more attractive for passengers than driving.

Increasing densities around railway stations was also important to bring people closer to their jobs and reduce car dependency. The planner said ­Australian cities were under-capital­ising on that opportunity.

"We could only wish for that kind infrastructure and yet you don't have the density around it to fully take ­advantage of it," Mr Toderian said, referring to Sydney's fleet of double-decker trains.

[Jonno]

http://ideas.time.com/2013/07/31/the-end-of-the-suburbs/

The End of the Suburbs
The country is resettling along more urbanized lines, and the American Dream is moving with it

By Leigh Gallagher @leighgallagherJuly 31, 201364 Comments


Getty Images
A major change is underway in where and how we are choosing to live. In 2011, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the rate of urban population growth outpaced suburban growth, reversing a trend that held steady for every decade since the invention of the automobile. In several metropolitan areas, building activity that was once concentrated in the suburban fringe has now shifted to what planners call the "urban core," while demand for large single-family homes that characterize our modern suburbs is dwindling. This isn't just a result of the recession. Rather, the housing crisis of recent years has concealed something deeper and more profound happening to what we have come to know as American suburbia. Simply speaking, more and more Americans don't want to live there anymore.

(MORE: Do The Suburbs Make You Selfish?)

The American suburb used to evoke a certain way of life, one of tranquil, tree-lined streets, soccer leagues and center hall colonials. Today's suburb is more likely to evoke endless sprawl, a punishing commute, and McMansions. In the pre-automobile era, suburban residents had to walk once they disembarked from the train, so houses needed to be located within a reasonable distance to the station and homes were built close together. Shopkeepers set up storefronts around the station where pedestrian traffic was likely to be highest. The result was a village center with a grid shaped street pattern that emerged organically around the day-to-day needs and walking patterns of the people who lived there. Urban planners describe these neighborhoods, which you can still see in older suburbs, as having "vibrancy" or "experiential richness" because, without even trying, their design promoted activity, foot traffic, commerce and socializing.  As sociologist Lewis Mumford wrote, "As long as the railroad stop and walking distances controlled suburban growth, the suburb had form."

Then came World War Two, and the subsequent housing shortage. The Federal Housing Administration had already begun insuring long-term mortgage loans made by private lenders, and the GI Bill provided low-interest, zero-down-payment loans to millions of veterans. The widespread adoption of the car by the middle class untethered developers from the constraints of public transportation and they began to push further out geographically. Meanwhile, single-use zoning laws that carved land into buckets for residential, commercial and industrial use instead of having a single downtown core altered the look, feel and overall DNA of our modern suburbs. From then on, residential communities were built around a different model entirely, one that abandoned the urban grid pattern in favor of a circular, asymmetrical system made of curving subdivisions, looping streets and cul-de-sacs.

(MORE: Viewpoint: Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of Us)

But in solving one problem—the severe postwar housing shortage—we unwittingly created some others: isolated, single-class communities. A lack of cultural amenities. Miles and miles of chain stores and Ruby Tuesdays. These are the negative qualities so often highlighted in popular culture, in TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Weeds and Suburgatory, to name just a few. In 2011, the indie rock band Arcade Fire took home a Grammy for The Suburbs, an entire album dedicated to teen angst and isolation inspired by band members' Win and William Butler's upbringing in Houston's master-planned community The Woodlands.  Although many still love and defend the suburbs, they have also become the constant target of angst by the likes of Kate Taylor, a stay-at-home mom who lives in a suburb of Charlotte and uses the Twitter name @culdesacked. "If the only invites I get from you are at-home direct sales 'parties,' please lose my number, then choke yourself. #suburbs."

There is still a tremendous amount of appeal in suburban life: space, a yard of one's own, less-crowded schools. I don't have anything against the suburbs personally—although I currently live in Manhattan's West Village, I had a pretty idyllic childhood growing up in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb twelve miles west of Philadelphia. We are a nation that values privacy and individualism down to our very core, and the suburbs give us that. But somewhere between leafy neighborhoods built around lively railroad villages and the shiny new subdivisions in cornfields on the way to Iowa that bill themselves as suburbs of Chicago, we took our wish for privacy too far. The suburbs overshot their mandate.

(MORE: Whatever Happened to the Big, Bad "Shadow Inventory" of Homes?)

Many older suburbs are still going strong, and real estate developers are beginning to build new suburban neighborhoods that are mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly, a movement loosely known as New Urbanism. Even though almost no one walks everywhere in these new communities, residents can drive a mile or two instead of ten or twenty, own one car instead of two. "We are moving from location, location, location in terms of the most important factor to access, access, access," says Shyam Kannan, formerly a principal at real estate consultancy Robert Charles Lesser and now managing director of planning at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA.)

(MORE: Selling Your House? Choose Your Words Carefully)

As the country resettles along more urbanized lines, some suggest the future may look more like a patchwork of nodes—mini urban areas all over the country connected to one another with a range of public transit options. It's not unlike the dense settlements of the Northeast already, where city-suburbs like Stamford, Greenwich, West Hartford and others exist in relatively close proximity. "The differences between cities and suburbs are diminishing," says Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program director Bruce Katz, noting that cities and suburbs are also becoming more alike racially, ethically, and socio-economically.

Whatever things look like in ten years—or twenty, or fifty, or more—there's one thing everyone agrees on: there will be more options. The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two or more children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore; there are multiple American Dreams, and multiple American Dreamers. The good news is that the entrepreneurs, academics, planners, home builders and thinkers who plan and build the places we live in are hard at work trying to find space for all of them.

Adapted from The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving by Leigh Gallagher, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright (c) Leigh Gallagher, 2013.

[Jonno]

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/future-cities/4715824

Why we shouldn't give up on suburbs
Monday 27 May 2013 6:38PMGraeme Davison

Much of the debate around urbanisation is about a retreat away from the suburbs and a re-emphasis on inner city living. But sheer weight of numbers, both in terms of the world's ever-increasing population and the rate of global urbanisation, suggests that suburbia has a very real future.

For 150 years we've been progressing steadily towards the suburbs, believing they represented the best kind of urban life.

Now we've suddenly, within a generation or so, erected a kind of 'Stop! Go Back!' sign at the perimeter and said that we have to head in a different direction.

A different generation with a different outlook is more attracted to urban ways of life than perhaps to suburban ways of life. It's coupled now with an environmental awareness. People think that the suburb—which was once equated with the most virtuous, healthy kind of life—is bad for us.

The suburb isn't going to be the dominant paradigm that it's been for 150 years or so, but I don't think that the suburb has entirely exhausted its appeal. To some extent the debate is dominated by interests and outlooks that are best represented in the inner city. If you go to the urban perimeter and talk to people, there are plenty who still find the suburb an appealing way of life.

I'm in favour of grafting new ways of life onto the suburbs we've already got, rather than imagining that we can somehow stop and reverse and go to an entirely different place. Suburbs represent adaptable living space. It's easier to retrofit the ordinary suburban house to harvest its own rainwater for example, to generate its own electricity, than it is if you happen to be living in an apartment. That space is capable of being recycled and reused.

We inherited the idea in Australia that the suburb is thought of as being the place where the Philistines live. There was a measure of truth in that. The fact that, for example, the suburb was first attractive to evangelicals. The evangelicals then often recreated suburbs in their own image, they were dry areas, they were wowser areas and so on.
GRAEME DAVISON
The word 'sprawl' is the no-no word that enters our language every time we think about suburbia. When it was first used it didn't necessarily mean simply low-density urban environments, what it meant above all was unplanned low-density development. Many of the things that are wrong with our suburbs are harnessed to the lack of coordination, for example, between transport and land use. If we had actually built the suburbs we have in a different way, the fact that they are relatively low density wouldn't matter as much.

One of the underlying themes in current debate around suburbs is the attempt to try and do things on the cheap. The argument for going back and consolidating the inner city is that you can make more intensive use of existing infrastructure, and that reflects the fact that for a generation or so now when we have built suburbs we have built them without the necessary infrastructure. In the 19th century when we built suburbs we built them with very strong central government involvement. Central governments built the railways that supplied the schools, built the roads that did all of the other things that made the suburbs habitable. Now in more recent times, largely under the influence of small government doctrine, we have declined to invest in the suburbs in the way that would make them a long-term proposition.

It's not surprising that people look at the kind of suburbs we've built on the fringes of Sydney and Melbourne now and are appalled. They are appalling. They're not appalling because they're suburbs, they're appalling because they haven't been built well.

We inherited the idea in Australia that the suburb is thought of as being the place where the Philistines live. There was a measure of truth in that. The fact that, for example, the suburb was first attractive to evangelicals. The evangelicals often recreated suburbs in their own image: they were dry areas, they were wowser areas and so on. It's not surprising that after the war intellectuals tend to look upon the suburbs as being the place they don't want to go. Mind you, many of them at that stage were heading to fringe areas of the city, where they built in mud bricks and in ways that were unconventional and seemed to them to be perfectly compatible with intellectual life.

If you are looking at what's happening to the major capital cities now, some of the most interesting things are not happening right in the inner city. People notice the tall apartment blocks on the horizon but they are actually accommodating a very small proportion of the population. Those that are going to fringe suburbs, by comparison with the recent past, are a diminishing proportion of the population. Where most of the people are going is in the remaking of the middle distance suburbs, where I think the most interesting things are happening.

And one of the things that is happening is that these suburbs are steadily developing many of the characteristics that people previously associated with the inner city. If it's drinking cafe latte under an umbrella or if it's participating in kinds of intellectual activity that we associate with the inner city, that's something that is now percolating through into the middle distance suburbs.

You don't go to the edge necessarily, you don't go to the centre. The place to really watch is the middle.

Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison teaches at the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University. Find out more about the future of the city at Future Tense.

[James]

Jonno, the paradigm is starting to shift in favour of higher-density inner suburban development, but there will continue to be a need for developments further and further out in order to provide affordable options for people who don't have the money to buy closer to the CBD or who prefer the lifestyle of a place a long way from the CBD. If they are willing to live out there and bear the time/travel costs, so be it.

Personally (and this is a viewpoint created by my close proximity to major activity centres for many years) I would not want to live 12-15km + from the CBD just because every time I would hop in a car/bus the travel time increases and thus so does the cost of transit.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Personally (and this is a viewpoint created by my close proximity to major activity centres for many years) I would not want to live 12-15km + from the CBD just because every time I would hop in a car/bus the travel time increases and thus so does the cost of transit.

Indeed. But it can change in a snap when it starts to depend on your family (if your partner works, kids, schools, backyard, tool shed etc), location and lifestyle as similar locations across town might be worlds apart. We find Eatons Hill to be a good little spot because everything needed is close by. It's really only myself that heads anywhere close to the city but I work shift hours so my 'commutes' tend to be at the very quiet times. Family in Samford are about 15-20 minutes away. Driving/riding around the countryside is basically on my doorstep. The small shops are also just down the road. The bigger shops are about 5 mins further down the road. Both Westfields are within a 20 minute drive. You can get everything a man needs in Brendale..... would be good if there was a tradetools mob there but Geebung will have to do Traffic can be a pain in the ass at times but so is everywhere else. PT is decent. It's not good but it can be a lot better. Driving to the train station/Albany Creek to pick up family is quick and easy.... most times Geographically it might be in the middle of nowhere on the fringes of Brisbane (although that's starting to change) about a 18-22km drive from the city but it's the center of pretty much everything we do. Places like Springfield would have families that would be the same as us (working,living close by with no need to go to the city frequently. They might catch the train but they may not be going all the way to the city).

[Old Northern Road]

Personally (and this is a viewpoint created by my close proximity to major activity centres for many years) I would not want to live 12-15km + from the CBD just because every time I would hop in a car/bus the travel time increases and thus so does the cost of transit.

Indeed. But it can change in a snap when it starts to depend on your family (if your partner works, kids, schools, backyard, tool shed etc), location and lifestyle as similar locations across town might be worlds apart. We find Eatons Hill to be a good little spot because everything needed is close by. It's really only myself that heads anywhere close to the city but I work shift hours so my 'commutes' tend to be at the very quiet times. Family in Samford are about 15-20 minutes away. Driving/riding around the countryside is basically on my doorstep. The small shops are also just down the road. The bigger shops are about 5 mins further down the road. Both Westfields are within a 20 minute drive. You can get everything a man needs in Brendale..... would be good if there was a tradetools mob there but Geebung will have to do Traffic can be a pain in the ass at times but so is everywhere else. PT is decent. It's not good but it can be a lot better. Driving to the train station/Albany Creek to pick up family is quick and easy.... most times Geographically it might be in the middle of nowhere on the fringes of Brisbane (although that's starting to change) about a 18-22km drive from the city but it's the center of pretty much everything we do. Places like Springfield would have families that would be the same as us (working,living close by with no need to go to the city frequently. They might catch the train but they may not be going all the way to the city).

Decent PT? Is that sarcasm? Also remember things are going to be very different once your children get older.

[HappyTrainGuy]

A little bit of both. It's decent in that it's available to get us places but it's far far from good. Hourly bus to Strathpine, hourly to Chermside and mixed heading to the city. But if I lived further away ie Cashmere/Warner/Samford way or closer to the city ie parts of Albany Creek then things would be different (for us at least).

[James]

Indeed. But it can change in a snap when it starts to depend on your family (if your partner works, kids, schools, backyard, tool shed etc), location and lifestyle as similar locations across town might be worlds apart. We find Eatons Hill to be a good little spot because everything needed is close by. It's really only myself that heads anywhere close to the city but I work shift hours so my 'commutes' tend to be at the very quiet times. Family in Samford are about 15-20 minutes away. Driving/riding around the countryside is basically on my doorstep. The small shops are also just down the road. The bigger shops are about 5 mins further down the road. Both Westfields are within a 20 minute drive. You can get everything a man needs in Brendale..... would be good if there was a tradetools mob there but Geebung will have to do Traffic can be a pain in the ass at times but so is everywhere else. PT is decent. It's not good but it can be a lot better. Driving to the train station/Albany Creek to pick up family is quick and easy.... most times Geographically it might be in the middle of nowhere on the fringes of Brisbane (although that's starting to change) about a 18-22km drive from the city but it's the center of pretty much everything we do. Places like Springfield would have families that would be the same as us (working,living close by with no need to go to the city frequently. They might catch the train but they may not be going all the way to the city).

By relative comparison, for us the small shops are 5 mins walk/1-2 mins drive down the road - and there are two of them. Indro is 5 minutes away by car, 10 by bus and 30 by foot, for Toowong its 4/6/20 mins. Bus leaves from within 400m of our residence, with BUZ within 1km (and praise TransLink for BUZ 412!) and rail a bit over 2km. For myself, UQ is 5 mins bus/20 mins walk away. If I were to live alone, I would look to something either along the Toowong - Corinda corridor or along BUZ 412/444, simply because living so close to everything, I've come to value the easy mobility I have.

Yes, a house further out would mean one could buy a nicer house, but it'd be in exchange for sacrificing easy access to the world. And I don't think that is what people realise. Yes, a house may be $xx,xxx cheaper, but by the time you consider the amount of time one spends commuting/shuttling kids around the cost of transport in both money and time becomes huge. Yes, it may be more "peaceful and tranquil", but the point is moot if you are spending 2 hours every day going to/from work.

[#Metro]

Horses for courses. One person's good is another person's bad and people have different tastes and values.
There are people who live out at Samford. They place a high value on 'Country lifestyle' but has close access to city amenities. Same with people who live out on the Moreton Bay Islands. Terrible connectivity and far from civilization, but that's what they want.

[Jonno]

Horses for courses. One person's good is another person's bad and people have different tastes and values.
There are people who live out at Samford. They place a high value on 'Country lifestyle' but has close access to city amenities. Same with people who live out on the Moreton Bay Islands. Terrible connectivity and far from civilization, but that's what they want.

Until it is costing us billions in taxes to support their demand for uninterrupted car travel, the additional health costs from obesity / rd trauma, policing, unemployment benefits due to unaccessible jobs , etc.

The reality is that urban, walkable, mixed-use, transit oriented living is what people are now demanding and our town plans, developments and policies are not delivering!!

[HappyTrainGuy]

 

[#Metro]

Until it is costing us billions in taxes to support their demand for uninterrupted car travel, the additional health costs from obesity / rd trauma, policing, unemployment benefits due to unaccessible jobs , etc.

The reality is that urban, walkable, mixed-use, transit oriented living is what people are now demanding and our town plans, developments and policies are not delivering!!

This is true. I won't go so far as to interpret this as 'hold a gun to a developers head and force them to build according to my particular plan' but as an observation, yes there are costs and yes there is demand.

Housing within the inner suburbs is expensive. This acts as a stimulant to developers to develop land to high densities in these areas and as a rationing device allocating limited space.

Housing within the outer suburbs is generally cheaper. The same developer may build lower density housing because they can offer it cheaper to the people with less money and offer more house and space to compensate for the fact that the location isn't inner city.

There are also other reasons like proximity to particular schools, lifestyle reasons (i.e. build 'dream homes' where you get to decide the design) and so forth.

A pattern I have noticed is that countries that were founded by European Settlement (i.e Canada, America, Australia, NZ) whose settlers came from Europe, and had plenty of opportunity to build cities just like Europe, and explicitly chose not to do so. And I am talking about the period 1788 - 1950 (approx) before the car became a major city shaping force.

Developers generally build what people want. The same developer who builds high density apartments in the inner city will build low density sprawl in the suburbs. How do I know this? If a developer didn't build what people want, their profit margin would go down, and a developer who consistently ignored this financial warning alarm would then face bankruptcy.

The distortions in the expression of people's preferences come down to laws which place restrictions on building heights, forms, what you can and can't build, where you can and can't build, and so forth. And groups which actively place parks on developable land for the purpose of blocking out incoming residents.

i.e. http://www.cramed.org.au/ Check out the scary looking skyscraper with teeth bearing down on residents. Politicians love this as well as people who do not live in the area don't vote, but local residents *do* and hence the pressure is always to block.

About Us
Sun, 20/02/2011 - 16:17 — webmaster
CRAMED is a community group that began life as CRAM (Concerned Residents Against Milton Tennis Court Development) in 2002 with the community based appeal against the Multiplex development proposed for the Milton Tennis Court Site.

We have moved on since then to take on excessive developments in the Milton, Paddington and Auchenflower areas.

CRAMED is determined to bring about proper community consultation so that Neighbourhood Plans, Local Area Plans and other planning tools used by the Brisbane City Council and the Queensland State Government truly reflect the residents views and aspirations for their area.

To encourage that happy medium where the community is improved by development but not destroyed by it. Inappropriate developments and their effects remain long after the developer has moved on and the resident community is left to cope with the fall out.

We are all rate payers in one way or another and so we also pay when the Brisbane City Council allows short sited decisions to be made with long term effects. If they approve developments on flood plains that then have an adverse affect on neighbouring properties it is generally the Council and not the developer who is sued. We as ratepayers are punished not the town planners who made the decision.CRAMED Concerned Residents Against Milton's Excessive Development.

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> Contract is awarded for new Springfield hospital

[#Metro]

http://jacdigital.com.au/2010/10/high-rise-debate-looms-over-milton/

CRAMED is not happy about Milton TOD

Residents and business owners are angry about the proposed Transit Oriented Development (TOD) plan in Milton.

The $210 million mixed-use development plan by FKP Developers, situated alongside Railway Terrace, includes a complete demolition of the site and a revamp of the Milton Railway Station.

FKP proposes to knock down existing commercial buildings and housing and will revitalise the surrounding empty space to construct a 30-storey "finger" high-rise, comprising of 298 residential units and office, gym, restaurant, retail and railway facilities.

Mr Paul Cholakos, resident and member of the Concerned Residents Against Milton's Excessive Development (CRAMED) group led by Elizabeth Handley (pictured above) has joined the bandwagon against the proposal, irate over the lack of consultation with the local community.

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> Sod turned for $154m of work on Orion stage two

[ozbob]

From the Queensland Times 17th April 2014 page 4

Springfield rail just the ticket for commuters

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> $600,000 path to new life

[ozbob]

Media Release
Minister for Transport and Main Roads
The Honourable Scott Emerson

Springfield commute made easy by road and rail

Springfield motorists and rail passengers are getting home to their families more quickly and more safely following the completion of the Centenary Highway upgrade and two new train stations.

Transport and Main Roads Minister Scott Emerson joined Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale to celebrate the completion of the $475 million Richlands to Springfield project today.

"As part of our strong plan for better infrastructure we have increased capacity and improved safety for motorists on the Centenary Highway," Mr Emerson said.

"When we came into office we reviewed spending for this project and were able to remove Labor's gold plating and deliver greater benefits for the community – for the same money.

"After reviewing the project we were able to include two 5.5km lanes on the Centenary Highway between the Logan Motorway Interchange and Springfield Parkway, in addition to the Richlands to Springfield train line.

"Motorists have benefited from these additional lanes since they were completed last month and today signals the official completion of this major transport infrastructure project."

Cr Pisasale said Ipswich City Council was proud to be able to work with the State Government to deliver 500 car parks at the Springfield Central station.

"The car parks were completed earlier this year and it is good to see that they are being well used by rail passengers," he said.

Mr Emerson said the additional car parks fixed another Labor infrastructure mess after it failed to plan properly for the parking needs of passengers.

"These car parks are often more than 90 per cent full by the morning peak, proving Labor's plan of building only 100 car parks would have fallen well short of the demand," he said

"Patronage from the Springfield and Springfield Central train stations has continued to increase since they were opened in December last year.

"Combined, the two stations have seen passenger trips grow by 60 per cent, from 48,742 trips in December to 79,336 trips in May.

"Passengers at Springfield Central station will now also have a great appreciation of the Indigenous heritage of the region, with a display at the station showing replicas of artefacts found during early stages of the rail project.

"The display commemorates the rich history of the Yagara people in the Springfield area and the hundreds of stone tools and other indigenous artefacts found, including a fishing spear, hunting boomerang, stone axe, chisel, dilly bag and 3000-year-old earth oven."

[ENDS] 3 July 2014

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> $475m buys more lanes, a new train and parking

[petey3801]

Noticed this morning that a small shop has opened up at Springfield station, on the Springfield Central end outside the fare gates. Great to see!

[ozbob]

Noticed this morning that a small shop has opened up at Springfield station, on the Springfield Central end outside the fare gates. Great to see!

[ozbob]

The site at Richlands of the Construction Offices/Compounds for the Darra to Richlands/Richlands to Springfield construction projects has now been cleared of the temporary office buildings etc.

[techblitz]

richlands station coffee shop is up for sale...

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/richlands/business-for-sale/coffee-shop-for-sale-fabulous-train-station-location/1060694971

[ozbob]

Queensland Times --> Springfield train stations shine

MORE than 810,000 journeys have been recorded since the Springfield rail line opened a year ago, and the numbers are set to increase.

Transport Minister Scott Emerson said that since opening the rail line last December, there had been an average of more than 67,500 passenger journeys to and from Springfield and Springfield Central a month.

"The most popular month was May, with almost 79,000 passenger journeys recorded," he said.

Mr Emerson said "98 per cent of Springfield line trains arrived on time since December last year".

Cr David Morrison said the community had supported the rail line and that it was not just taking people to Brisbane, but also transporting commuters to Springfield.

"If you drive past both car parks at Springfield and Springfield Central stations on any week day they would be 95% full, and there are 200 car parks at Springfield and 500 at Springfield Central," Cr Morrison said.

"If you go down there to the stations in the morning you will observe a lot of USQ students coming in from Brisbane suburbs to Springfield Central.

"The community has really embraced it.

Cr Morrison said with several key projects to be completed in 2015, Springfield would become more of a transport hub and have even more commuters using the trains.

"We've got the GE state headquarters opening and they will have 600-odd workers to start off, and we have the duplication of USQ when they open their building, the extension of Orion and council's lagoon at Robelle Domain," Cr Morrison said.

Mr Emerson said both rail passengers were getting home to their families more quickly and safely since the Springfield line opened.

[#Metro]

Cr David Morrison said the community had supported the rail line and that it was not just taking people to Brisbane, but also transporting commuters to Springfield.

Further reinforces the multi-destinational view. Lends more support for bus reform, particularly the Centenary area.
15 min trains to Springfield and express trains to Ipswich all day would be well supported.

[SurfRail]

There should be a big push for 15 minute headways 7 days a week on Kippa-Ring from day 1, throughrouted to Springfield and with Ipswich to Caboolture 30 minute headway expresses overlaid. 

Deferring withdrawal of the later EMUs or increasing the NGR order to 600 cars should make that and rolling out 15 minute headways to Cleveland and Kuraby (plus on weekends) easily achievable with the only serious infrastructure required being stabling facilities.  Current timetable demonstrates that there is no significant inherent infrastructure limitation with any of these objectives, just rollingstock availability and the need for a bit of tweaking.

[ozbob]

There should be a big push for 15 minute headways 7 days a week on Kippa-Ring from day 1, throughrouted to Springfield and with Ipswich to Caboolture 30 minute headway expresses overlaid. 

Deferring withdrawal of the later EMUs or increasing the NGR order to 600 cars should make that and rolling out 15 minute headways to Cleveland and Kuraby (plus on weekends) easily achievable with the only serious infrastructure required being stabling facilities.  Current timetable demonstrates that there is no significant inherent infrastructure limitation with any of these objectives, just rollingstock availability and the need for a bit of tweaking.

I think there is a good chance of this coming about once everything settles with the new Government and new trains start arriving. With the introduction of services to Kippa-Ring this provides the opportunity for a sector one timetable revision.