The joys of the Great Circle Line

[triplethree]

During university holidays, I have a job in Toowong. Standard office hours, 8:30-ish to 5:30-ish Monday to Friday. And I am unfortunate enough to commute to and from work on the Great Circle Line.

I thought I'd want to chronicle some of my experiences on this world-class bus route for your reading pleasure. And, yes, I do have a car and I would jump into my vehicle and commute behind the wheel in a heartbeat, if only there were parking spaces available for the non-managerial staff at my workplace.

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The winter school holidays have just ended. Every single morning during the kids' break, the 598 was early -- usually by about 5 minutes, sometimes more. Every. Single. Morning. I cottoned onto this chronic earliness rather quickly, and adjusted my morning schedule as a result.

School holidays ended this week. Now it's the opposite. Late. Late. Late. By about ten to fifteen minutes. I didn't realise this, until a fellow torture victim-cum-GCL commuter told me this morning about how the GCL works in peak hour and how school holidays affect it, and how hordes of schoolchildren further up the route delay the bus for everyone else well downwind, perhaps tens of kilometres away. It was then that I realised why my commuter comrades at the same stop (there's usually three of them) have been arriving late this week without looking like they were in a hurry or anxious about missing their bus.

And the penny dropped - the Great Circle Line's serpentine, seemingly nonsensical routing through the backstreets of Brisbane makes a lot of sense when you think of it as a series of school runs. Stuartholme. Towoong SMT Academy. BBC. Nyanda High. Sunnybank High. Macgregor High. Mount Gravatt TAFE. Eagle Farm TAFE. Mt Maria College. Marist College Ashgrove. Not to mention all the primary schools which are right on the route, which I can't be bothered to mention. Yes. It all makes sense now.

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For such a pathetic service, the Great Circle Line actually does get some regular commuter patronage, not a lot though -- most likely people in my situation, who have a car and would like to drive but are are prevented from doing so by the lack of parking in Toowong and Indooroopilly. There are typically between 12 and 16 passengers on board upon arrival at Toowong, where about three-quarters of the bus get off.

One great thing about commuting on the GCL and not, say, the 385 is that you're guaranteed to see the same people every day. This is very reassuring. I've never chatted to any of them except to to engage in a bitching session about the GCL (the others start it, not me), I don't know any of their names and I haven't even exchanged glances with most of them. But it is oddly calming to see the same faces, and to look around and see that they're just as frustrated as I am.

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One immutable cast-iron fact about loops is that they don't have ends. You don't need to have a BSc majoring in mathematics with a minor in topology to know that. Drivers' shifts, however, do have ends. The finite shift must come to terms with the infinite loop.

And thus driver changeovers are necessary. While passengers are on board, of course. If passengers had to change buses along with the drivers, it wouldn't be a loop anymore, and no innumerate nincompoop at Brisbane City Council would be able to proclaim that they run a bus all around Brisbane ... in one giant circle that will get you everywhere!

So passengers must wait. In some cases (the past two evenings in a row, for example), the relief driver hasn't even been at the stop. The driver knocking off has had to call bus control on his radio to inform the powers-that-be of this fact. Once the relief driver has appeared, then begins a convoluted procedure which may well be necessary but is none the less painful to watch. Check the mirrors -- absolutely necessary. Only a pathologically impatient sociopath would have a problem with that. Adjust the seat to the driver's preferred posture -- all good.

Then the driver begins to log in to the Driver Console Unit. He punches in so many keys that I am almost certain it takes less keystrokes to get through the doors at Fort Knox. You can almost hear the blood pressure rise among all the passengers while waiting for the bus to depart. The whole process takes anywhere between four and seven minutes. Yes. I time it. My trip is timetabled to take around ten minutes. When these changeovers happen on my trip home I'm lucky if it takes less than twenty.

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The Go Card has a grudge against the Great Circle Line. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Ten journeys to and from work last week. Two DCU failures. One failure so far this week, after four journeys. The whole Cubic system doesn't seem to like driver changeovers. I bet the software designers never had in mind the idea that a single service may have a driver changeover mid-trip.

It often goes something like this. The 599 stops at Toowong Depot for a driver changeover. After the driver does his little data entry marathon, he departs and goes through those B-lights at the beginning of the Western Freeway. About the time when the bus goes into the Botanic Gardens (where, I have recently discovered, someone actually gets off at about 6:10pm every night -- maybe he uses the car park there as a park-and-ride?), the whole Go Card system decides to chuck a hissy fit. "Nyur-nyurny-nyur-nyur! I don't like you, New Driver! I'm hiding in my room! Suck eggs!"

This happens every time. The system then goes through the whole rebooting process. Though I'm not a believer, I silently pray that it will reboot in time for my stop. Sure, if it doesn't I'll only be 94 cents out of pocket, but I'll be one journey away from reaching my free journey cap and that 94 cents rightfully belongs to me.

Tonight, the driver saw me get up for my stop, and intentionally slowed down so that the system might successfully reboot by the time I got to my destination. It worked -- with about three seconds to spare. God bless his cotton socks.

---

The Great Circle Line, pardonnez ma français, is a f#$%^&* joke. So what can be done about it?

First things first. Get rid of this idea of a huge circle connecting all of Brisbane. It doesn't embrace the city like some tender motherly hug. It chokes it like a python around your neck. Ever seen the traffic on Metroad 5 through Bardon and Enoggera? On the Gateway Bridge? Along Creek Road? Kessels Road? There's more than enough demand for decent cross-town transport. The absence of a decent public transport alternative contributes to all that traffic.

Loop routes are bad. They don't have ends. This means that a traffic jam in Cannon Hill stuffs things up for Mitchelton; a broken traffic light in Sunnybank makes life more difficult in Nundah. Because loops don't have ends but bus fuel tanks do, the loop can't run much more than twelve hours before buses have to go back to their home depots. That prevents the loop running beyond evening peak hour. Loop routes also mean that you have those nasty driver changeovers chewing up people's time, time they would rather spend with their kids or pursuing their hobbies or cooking dinner or sorting their sock drawer. And before someone says "But at least there's no dead running!", consider this: the 599 service which goes through Toowong around 6pm has a driver changeover, then terminates at Chermside, where it then runs empty back south.

Chop the stupid thing up into three. 590 Chermside to Garden City; 591 Garden City to Indooroopilly; 592 Indooroopilly to Chermside. You'll now have three manageable chunks. Not quite bite-size chunks, but manageable nonetheless.

Sherwood depot can do the Indooroopilly starters and terminators; Virginia Depot can do the Chermside starters and terminators; and Garden City Depot can do, well, the Garden City starters and terminators. That sorts the dead-running issue out.

Second thing. Get the Tefal Primaglide out and iron the bloody thing. If you want to provide services to certain schools -- provide some school buses. It's unreasonable to align a bus route away from its straightest possible path past schools which are only trip generators for barely one hour a day. Why would someone at midday want to catch a bus which takes a nice little sightseeing tour down some suburban street just because there's a primary school down there?

Third thing. Up the frequency. Every 30-ish minutes, even in peak hour, is pathetic. How are you going to attract people out of their cars and onto public transport (and generating this little thing called "fare revenue" which will help pay for the extra services) with such an appalling level of service?

---

Some people might ask, "Well, if the Great Cicle Line is so bad, why don't you just catch a bus into the city and a train or bus out to Toowong?" My reply would be, "Well, why should I?" Have you seen the 375 and 385 in peak hour? "Sardine can" isn't an appropriate term. At least no sardine gets left behind in a cannery, wondering when the next can will come and whether it will also be so crowded that she can't get in. And why should I have to follow a journey's path that looks more like a draftsperson's compass than a straight line? It typically takes about fifty minutes to get from home to work via Roma Street. The Great Circle Line, as slow, unreliable and infrequent as it is, usually takes a shade over thirty.

I'm doing society a favour by taking a less crowded service. The space that I don't take on the 385 is the space that someone who is actually going to the city can occupy.

This isn't some country town. It's a greater metropolitan area of 3 million people. It's not unreasonable to expect that one could go from one suburb to another without going via the city centre.

I'm also lucky that my job doesn't require strict punctuality -- though, being a professional white-collar industry, being late is poor form, will raise eyebrows and is best avoided. I pity the people such as the poor young lady at my stop who works at Target Indooroopilly, who are in industries like retail where punctuality is Moses and the prophets.

I should also count my blessings that I at least have a cross-town service which I can actually use to get to and from work. Except for the lucky minority of Brisbanites whose houses or jobs are handy to the Great Circle Line, the 590 or the 369, such an option is totally absent. This is a crying shame. The sooner we have a whole series of cross-town routes throughout Brisbane that will give us greater freedom to move around our city, the better.

[#Metro]

What a relief to know someone shares my views on this piece of legacy routing safari tour.
And SAFARI TOUR IT IS.

What is the solution?

And the penny dropped - the Great Circle Line's serpentine, seemingly nonsensical routing through the backstreets of Brisbane makes a lot of sense when you think of it as a series of school runs. Stuartholme. Towoong SMT Academy. BBC. Nyanda High. Sunnybank High. Macgregor High. Mount Gravatt TAFE. Eagle Farm TAFE. Mt Maria College. Marist College Ashgrove. Not to mention all the primary schools which are right on the route, which I can't be bothered to mention. Yes. It all makes sense now.

Yes, you know they could just run a special school bus four times a day - one set in the am and one set in the pm and make it SCHOOL BUS  and them chop up the GCL and steam iron the rest.

[STB]

You missed a few other crosstown routes - 260, 262, 280, 550, 560 (I'm sure there are a few others).

Also I have a feeling that the GCL came about as a bit of a marketing exercise in connecting shopping centres with communities along the way.  Hence why the GCL covers Mt Gravatt Central shops instead of heading straight down Newman Rd like the 590.

In general I agree with you as any long route will have troubles with staying on time, even if marketing wise it looks like a good thing for communities not having to remember multiple routes.  Mind you, even I still get a little confused over which way 598 goes and 599 goes.

Can I ask which stops in question you are talking about, or which section?  As it'd be interesting to see what the patronage is like on the rest of the route, and you generally need a solid 2 weeks of data across the day to get a good idea of what is really happening along the route.

[colinw]

Oh the memories. For a few, ahem, "memorable" months in 1995 & 1996 I was a regular commuter on the GCL.

You see, I lived in Sherwood, and had recently gotten a job at Eight Mile Plains (I'm still there today).

Being a non-driver, some of the time my wife - who was then a UQ student - would drive me to work, but at other times I caught the GCL from Sherwood to Garden City then walked the rest of the way, or else caught an allegedly connecting bus. I eventually gave up on connecting buses and just walked it.

I experimented with other options, like train to the city & bus out, but this was pre-busway and just didn't work.

This state of affairs lasted until some time in 1996, then we moved closer to my work, to an area in Logan with a Clark's bus that went past the tech park. Back then the Clark's service was far more spartan than these days, but still a heck of a lot more convenient than trying to commute from Sherwood to Eight Mile Plains using the Great Circle Line.

Two moves later we're back in Brisbane at Kuraby, where I have train to the CBD (if I ever get a job in there), and bus to work and the busway (which covers off both other options nicely). It is barely sufficient. Obviously I'd like to have the Tube or the Madrid Metro at my doorstep, but in Brisbane terms I feel fortunate to be able to live in a fairly spacious quarter acre block area and have my half hourly train until late at night, and a bus service that occasionally manages to run after dark and sometimes even on Sundays.  The price of living deep in the sprawl I guess.

Speaking of driver changes on buses, here's one from my student days. I grew up in Toowoomba, and did my degree at the predecessor of USQ - the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (DDIAE, commonly known by us inmates as "The Institute"). Buses to the campus were run by a local bus line called Hagan's. Most buses started at the north end of Toowoomba CBD at a terminus called "The Gasworks" due to the huge gas tanks nearby. The majority of Hagan's services to DDIAE were direct along West St, with a few inexplicable excursions into back streets.  But not the service around 11AM.  It wandered well off the main roads to the ramshackle wooden shed that passed as the bus depot. There it died for 15-20 minutes while the bus driver got off for morning tea and a smoke. The extra 20 minutes were timetabled in. One mid afternoon bus did the same thing.

[Golliwog]

Haha, if it's in the timetable, surely you can't complain about being late then Colin! 

I've had driver changes the on 385 as well. The spare driver is usually waiting in his bus on Coopers Camp Rd, between the stop on Coopers Camp and Jubilee Tce. As far as I can tell, the drivers swap buses and the old driver just takes the spare bus back to the depot.

I've used the GCL a few times between Brookside and Chermside, and along that stretch, it's not too bad. Though that could just be because right after I catch it I usually catch the 362, whose route can make most look good. I did once catch the GCL from Indro to Brookside, now that was a painfully circuitous route. Never again.

[techblitz]

Mind you, even I still get a little confused over which way 598 goes and 599 goes.

[triplethree]

What a relief to know someone shares my views on this piece of legacy routing safari tour.
And SAFARI TOUR IT IS.

I forgot to put in a section about how annoying that deviation into the Botanic Gardens is. Not even the Botanic Gardens workers catch it. Not even tourists catch it -- the City Botanic Gardens are still far more popular, purely due to location. Once -- once -- several years ago there was a whole grade of primary school kids from out Kenmore way who caught it in the early afternoon; they got off at Indooroopilly and interchanged to a bus back to their school there. (Why didn't they just hire a charter bus like schools always do?) Apart from that one instance, the statistical distribution of how many people board and alight there would be something like this:

0 passengers: 90%
1 passenger: 7%
2 passengers: 2%
3 or greater:1%

You missed a few other crosstown routes - 260, 262, 280, 550, 560 (I'm sure there are a few others).

I thought about some of those (and the 660, 680, 715, 745, etc.) but they're outside the jurisdiction of Brisbane City Council's network "planners". You know, those "whiz-kids" with a marketing degree who can barely count to ten and were lucky to get a Pass in Year 8 Maths, let alone understand the first thing about geometry and therefore come up with such gems as the "MaroonGlider"?

I'm going to digress from my own topic of the GCL here ... but I'd also like to say that these marketing "geniuses" didn't even pass high-school economics or an introductory economics unit at university level (which even I had to do, and I'm studying surveying/mapping!), because the first thing you learn as soon as you open an economics tetbook is this little thing called "opportunity cost". "Opportunity cost" is best described as "the thing that you didn't choose after choosing something else". E.g. you have $4 on you. Your last four bucks in the world. You're hungry and you're thirsty. What do you spend it on. A loaf of bread or two litres of milk? You buy the loaf of bread - you're still thirsty, and the milk is your "opportunity cost". You buy the milk - you're hungry, and the loaf is your "opportunity cost".

The MaroonGlider comes with a massive, MASSIVE opportunity cost. It gets resources which could be assigned to where they're needed -- the eastern suburbs, Albany Creek, cross-town services -- and uses those resources where they are not needed. And that, too, is a crying shame.

Also I have a feeling that the GCL came about as a bit of a marketing exercise in connecting shopping centres with communities along the way.  Hence why the GCL covers Mt Gravatt Central shops instead of heading straight down Newman Rd like the 590.

I once had (I think I've lost it while moving house because I haven't been able to find it anywhere!) a Brisbane Transport map from about 1999. It was in street directory format ... a book of about 30 pages or so. It had full-page ads inside it advertising various bus services. IIRC, one ad featured a woman standing in front of an empty shelf in a shoe shop scratching her head; the blurb said something along the lines of "if you can't find what you want at one shopping centre, go to the next shopping centre on the Great Circle Line".

That would make sense if the GCL went by the most reasonably direct path possible between major shopping centres. Which it doesn't. F'rinstance, why does the GCL go up Stuartholme Road instead of Metroad 5? Oh, that's right. There's a school on Stuartholme Road!

In general I agree with you as any long route will have troubles with staying on time, even if marketing wise it looks like a good thing for communities not having to remember multiple routes.  Mind you, even I still get a little confused over which way 598 goes and 599 goes.

Think of the Great Circle Line as a steering wheel. 598 goes before 599, so 598 is to the left of the 599 when you write them down. 598 goes left when you turn the steering wheel left, 599 goes right. That's how I remember it!

Can I ask which stops in question you are talking about, or which section?  As it'd be interesting to see what the patronage is like on the rest of the route, and you generally need a solid 2 weeks of data across the day to get a good idea of what is really happening along the route.

In the mornings, I go from the Bardon stop to Toowong. In the evenings, the reverse.

The majority of Hagan's services to DDIAE were direct along West St, with a few inexplicable excursions into back streets.  But not the service around 11AM.  It wandered well off the main roads to the ramshackle wooden shed that passed as the bus depot. There it died for 15-20 minutes while the bus driver got off for morning tea and a smoke. The extra 20 minutes were timetabled in. One mid afternoon bus did the same thing.

Oh deary deary me. Did he leave passengers just sitting there on the bus in the depot without supervision? I've had a sorta-kinda similar experience in Brunei. At the central bus interchange in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city, all the passengers boarded a bus, a Toyota Coaster or Mitsubishi Rosa. We all paid our B$1 flat fares and passed them down the front from passenger to passenger for the driver to collect. The tickets (dot-matrix printed stuff) were then passed back up the bus from hand to hand. The driver then went off for a smoke (out of our sight) with our fares, without letting us know if he would be back, etc. The other passengers told me he'd be back soon enough and he was just waiting for more passengers to arrive and fill up the bus so he'd make more money. Terima kasih, penumpang!

Haha, if it's in the timetable, surely you can't complain about being late then Colin! 

I've had driver changes the on 385 as well. The spare driver is usually waiting in his bus on Coopers Camp Rd, between the stop on Coopers Camp and Jubilee Tce. As far as I can tell, the drivers swap buses and the old driver just takes the spare bus back to the depot.

I've used the GCL a few times between Brookside and Chermside, and along that stretch, it's not too bad. Though that could just be because right after I catch it I usually catch the 362, whose route can make most look good. I did once catch the GCL from Indro to Brookside, now that was a painfully circuitous route. Never again.

I used to have lots of driver/vehicle changes on that stretch of the 385 too until a few years ago ... until I bought a car and now no longer have to go through the Labour of Hercules which is doing one's groceries using Brisbane public transport. It's hard enough getting your groceries home even in the best transport systems on earth (Berlin, Singapore, Toronto, etc.) In Brisbane, however, it's almost impossible with this city's lack of independent neighbourhood stores, extremely centralised chain stores and supermarkets, and antiquated trading hours legislation which seem to be rooted in some Victorian ideal of the village smithy going to bed at sunset and getting up before dawn and therefore not needing to do any shopping after 5pm.

One thing about those driver/bus changes on the 385. The drivers would always -- ALWAYS -- insist that you didn't need to touch off the first bus, that the system would recognise that it would be a through journey. They were always wrong. I would insist at each changeover that the bus driver needed to log back into his DCU again and let me touch out, but they always refused (they would log out at the Simpsons Road lights).

I couldn't believe how many fixed fares I used to get on the 385. Good riddance to shopping on PT.

[Gazza]

ey were always wrong. I would insist at each changeover that the bus driver needed to log back into his DCU again and let me touch out, but they always refused (they would log out at the Simpsons Road lights).

I'd threaten to report them to TL and then see if they change their tune.

[#Metro]

I'm going to digress from my own topic of the GCL here ... but I'd also like to say that these marketing "geniuses" didn't even pass high-school economics or an introductory economics unit at university level (which even I had to do, and I'm studying surveying/mapping!), because the first thing you learn as soon as you open an economics tetbook is this little thing called "opportunity cost". "Opportunity cost" is best described as "the thing that you didn't choose after choosing something else"

I would like to see the GCL CUT UP. CUT!! CUT!! CUT!!

However, that said, the map can be retained - and maybe re-named as the "Great Shopping Line". I put this idea up a while ago - wrap the bus up too like CityGlider and cover it in pictures of shopping bags. Run it every 15 minutes 7 am - 7 pm. Watch patronage go through the roof.

[Gazza]

wrap the bus up too like CityGlider

Just don't cover the damn windows with that wrap. ASsfkhrwkjhs I hate the way it reduces visibility, especially after dark.

[triplethree]

ey were always wrong. I would insist at each changeover that the bus driver needed to log back into his DCU again and let me touch out, but they always refused (they would log out at the Simpsons Road lights).

I'd threaten to report them to TL and then see if they change their tune.

Oh, I did, Gazza, oh, I did. It was like banging a head on a brick wall. If I recall correctly, I didn't even get a fixed fare adjustment most of the time. I just accepted it as an unavoidable cost of transacting business on the 385. The concession fixed fare was only $1.50 back then, so it wasn't that onerous - as long as you didn't touch on or touch off the second bus. Mind you, the drivers on the second bus would always accept it when I said that the first driver said it would still count as a through journey.

This was a few years ago, however, and now that I have my own petrol-powered shopping trolley I don't need to worry about it. I think (well, I hope) drivers are now better informed about how it doesn't count as a through journey when there's a vehicle changeover!

[Golliwog]

They got you to shift buses? That would have been quicker! Everytime it's happened to me it's been the drivers that change buses and the pax just sit there while the new driver logs on to the DCU in the old bus. That said, I don't catch the 385 very frequently anymore, I can usually get down to the train station.

[somebody]

Wow 333, I was tempted to TL:DR there.

Always wondered about that Stuartholme bit.

Drivers changes at Wesley Hospital do not seem to take that long, although not as fast as I am used to in Sydney.

Fuel changeovers seemed to stop a couple of years ago - although could continue on GCL services.

It's certainly annoying when the drivers are incorrect about details like the need to touch off.

I believe it is a happening thing with breaking up the GCL.  Could the Garden City-westbound service terminate at Sherwood?  They can terminate trackwork buses there.  Also Chermside-Indro - why not Towoong?  There is a reasonably frequent service on these corridors already, although I can see that terminating at Sherwood doesn't reach Indooroopilly shops conveniently.  I'm not sure why Moggill Rd needs yet another service - terminating at Toowong utilising the current 470 stop seems to have some advantages to me - much more convenient than Jephson St for the station, UQ/St Lucia buses and Toowong Village, and not too inconvenient for Indooroopilly buses.

[Golliwog]

Splitting it up, you'd want where ever you make the cuts in the route to meet up. Terminating Garden-City to Indro at Sherwood and Chermside to Indro at Toowong means if you're trying to get from say Brookside to somewhere past Sherwood you have to do a double interchange. Running along Moggill Rd and from Sherwood to Indro would be less about actually serving those areas and more about making the connection at Indooroopilly.

[somebody]

Splitting it up, you'd want where ever you make the cuts in the route to meet up. Terminating Garden-City to Indro at Sherwood and Chermside to Indro at Toowong means if you're trying to get from say Brookside to somewhere past Sherwood you have to do a double interchange. Running along Moggill Rd and from Sherwood to Indro would be less about actually serving those areas and more about making the connection at Indooroopilly.

I understand that, but services to Indooroopilly from Toowong are so frequent it wouldn't matter enough to justify the extra service-km.  I think the stop locations at Toowong are a far bigger deal.

[colinw]

The majority of Hagan's services to DDIAE were direct along West St, with a few inexplicable excursions into back streets.  But not the service around 11AM.  It wandered well off the main roads to the ramshackle wooden shed that passed as the bus depot. There it died for 15-20 minutes while the bus driver got off for morning tea and a smoke. The extra 20 minutes were timetabled in. One mid afternoon bus did the same thing.

Oh deary deary me. Did he leave passengers just sitting there on the bus in the depot without supervision? I've had a sorta-kinda similar experience in Brunei. At the central bus interchange in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city, all the passengers boarded a bus, a Toyota Coaster or Mitsubishi Rosa. We all paid our B$1 flat fares and passed them down the front from passenger to passenger for the driver to collect. The tickets (dot-matrix printed stuff) were then passed back up the bus from hand to hand. The driver then went off for a smoke (out of our sight) with our fares, without letting us know if he would be back, etc. The other passengers told me he'd be back soon enough and he was just waiting for more passengers to arrive and fill up the bus so he'd make more money. Terima kasih, penumpang!

He would just park it in the street outside, or in the driveway, hop off and leave us there unsupervised.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Mind you, even I still get a little confused over which way 598 goes and 599 goes.

Confused... I'm still trying to figure out what route stops here...  :conf

[triplethree]

Wow 333, I was tempted to TL:DR there.

Always wondered about that Stuartholme bit.

Drivers changes at Wesley Hospital do not seem to take that long, although not as fast as I am used to in Sydney.

Fuel changeovers seemed to stop a couple of years ago - although could continue on GCL services.

It's certainly annoying when the drivers are incorrect about details like the need to touch off.

I believe it is a happening thing with breaking up the GCL.  Could the Garden City-westbound service terminate at Sherwood?  They can terminate trackwork buses there.  Also Chermside-Indro - why not Towoong?  There is a reasonably frequent service on these corridors already, although I can see that terminating at Sherwood doesn't reach Indooroopilly shops conveniently.  I'm not sure why Moggill Rd needs yet another service - terminating at Toowong utilising the current 470 stop seems to have some advantages to me - much more convenient than Jephson St for the station, UQ/St Lucia buses and Toowong Village, and not too inconvenient for Indooroopilly buses.

I'm a natural-born wordsmith, and creative writing is one of my hobbies. Words tend to flow freely out of my fingers. Sometimes, a little too freely!

I wouldn't be hugely averse to cutting my planned 592 Chermside-Indro route back to Toowong, though I'd prefer to run through to Indro because of the shambolic stop locations in Toowong, and also because Indooroopilly is a major destination in its own right.

Though your suggestion is something I could live with, ideally you should be able to get off my planned 592 on High St southbound and change to a 88/4xx to Indro at the same stop. Vice versa northbound. This wouldn't be possible at present; you'd need to move stops around, maybe put in a new pedestrian crossing across Patterson's Folly, fix up the signal phasing in Toowong CBD (the signals don't seem to be synchronised at all. Stand at the main intersection for five minutes and you'll see what I mean.)

[kazzac]

Someone on here suggested once that there should be a Bulimba /Carindale cross-town route,I think that such a route would become very popular.

[somebody]

Someone on here suggested once that there should be a Bulimba /Carindale cross-town route,I think that such a route would become very popular.

232 already does half of that.

[SurfRail]

I believe there was once a Route 228 which went from the Bulimba area to the Greenslopes Hospital.  Andrew or one of our other resident Brisbane archeologists may know.  Probably cancelled due to low patronage - would have been pre-TransLink.