Yeah they were different proposals but they do serve different purposes too. Think U-Bahn vs S-Bahn.
4 Likes
UQ should be quarantined from any future PT development given their track record and idiotic decisions. The āregional roleā they play makes them an obstacle preventing direct PT access to to the western suburbs from the eastern & southern suburbs. Being an obstructionist on something petty as buses is counter to being an education institution.
There are existing rail stations at Toowong and Boggo Rd which are at opposite ends of UQ, which have frequent bus connections. The question is why would you need a direct underground rail line when UQ has heaps of existing connections.
Just remove a couple of road lanes on the M3 so you have room to drop a dedicated heavy rail corridor through the highway. Perth have mastered building and expanding their rail network on parts of their freeways. No better way to promote PT mode uptake using freeway corridors.
Letās not get into the realm of NIMBYs at this moment. Iām sure that the students and staff of UQ weāll definitely wish for better public transport access than a small bus station and a BUZ route that gets stuck in traffic.
Also Iām just not a huge fan of highway median rail corridors. Iām just being subjective when saying that.
1 Like
UQ lack of public transport through-routes shoujd indeed be the subject of targeted Social Media campaign like the BUG groups do
I just donāt think it would make sense to basically replace the busway with a whole new railway line, the busway isnāt anywhere near capacity and for anything between Buranda to Eight mile plains the density to justify a railway just isnāt there and having a freeway as large as the m3 cutting through the middle of the urban area would mean that a lot of land around just wouldnāt be very desirable or suitable for the high density developments that would justify that.
2 Likes
Yeah we shouldnāt replace the busway with the rail. Rather the rail line becomes a high capacity express overlay serving only major centres. Beenleigh, Loganholme, Mt Gravatt, CBD.
1 Like
If a new Perth-style railway line was built on the M3 Pacific Motorway, would it make sense for it to continue along the M2 Gateway Motorway and join the Beenleigh line at Kuraby? With LGCFR being constructed, I feel like the additional pair of track for express GC trains will merge off the Beenleigh line.
Furthermore, with the Perth-style corridor on the M2 and M3, would the portal be located at a different location at Yeerongpilly? I feel like Mt Gravatt would be a more appropriate portal for the tunnel; the M3 would be a bit steep at Mt Gravatt, and the railway can enter the tunnel portal, and the tunnel can go under Tarragindi.
Edit: After the GC trains have been diverted onto M3 from the Beenleigh line, the Middle track could be used by peak-hour, peak-direction Beenleigh trains that run express from Boggo Road to Kuraby, stopping only at Yeerongpilly, Salisbury, and Altandi.
2 Likes
Think you would/could/might just tunnel between Banoon to near Kuraby/M3 Freeway. 2 x Single Tube, Side-by-Side Tracks (becoming more common in rail tunneling) Some property resumptions for tunnel entrance at Kuraby.
Remove Sunnybank Station, Rebuild Runcorn/Altandi stations at Cr Beenleigh and Main Rds and rebuild Fruitgrove. Removes 4 Level Crossing. Stations only only built on 1 tunnel
Boy the City Plan needs more density!!! That could/should happen sooner than any tunnelling.
2 Likes
Weāre actually not that far from running out of (single track pair through the city) capacity on the Westside, thereās a reason why the ICRCS had a second tunnel a decade after CRR. (We call that āClevewichā.)
Quadding to Boggo Rd (and Kuraby) is long term necessary anyway unless you want to upgrade every single Beenleigh line station to 9 car trains. And if Clevewich happens the Merivale sector would be almost empty from the south anyway, so quadding is good use of that spare city capacity.
2 Likes
If the Clevewich option even happens (obviously a MASSIVE if), Iād love to see it tunnel somewhere after Indooroopilly with an underground station at Toowong, then under the river with a station in West End, a station at South Brisbane/Cultural Centre, in the CBD somewhere in the vicinity of Albert Street, a station somewhere close to Howard Smith Wharves (and potentially another station in New Farm), then Hawthorne/Bulimba and surfacing somewhere around Cannon Hill with a station at Creek Road in Cannon Hill. These services could continue through to Cleveland and Cannon Hill could be an interchange opportunity for those needing to travel the old route through Coorparoo and Boggo Road.
1 Like
Something like that. The alternative CRR2 tunnel portal site is probably Milton for a few reasons, and actually the ICRCS took it north not east (routes via UQ and Hawthorne/Bulimba were out of scope for them).
But what matters for the southern lines is that thereās only 4 or so stations on the Cleveland line that wouldnāt be taken over by Clevewich, and therefore thereās almost an entire sector available to use - if only we can do that quadding from Boggo Rd to (at least) Salisbury.
Having said that, without Beaudesert we can fit into CRR alone for decades yet on the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines, even without going to 9-car trains.
Hereās the ICRCS service plan. Note that the original designs for CRR had a crossover junction from the west to east of the corridor. ICRCS also assumes e.g. a 4th track Fairfield-Banoon, a 5th track Northgate-Bowen Hills, Gold Coast extension + CAMCOS. But it doesnāt assume Redcliffe or Flagstone.
Relevant to some of the discussion above, it also includes grade separation at Corinda + Yeerongpilly.
1 Like
So depressing that they thought we would have CRR2 by 2026 and we donāt even have CRR1 yet.
Iām getting more and more of the view that the Clevewich/CRR2 plan is actually hugely expensive and difficult, and for the same or less money you could build an entire light/medium capacity metro line that would also take load off the western line by drawing passengers there or having them directly interchange to it short of the city.
It would be cheaper per kilometre as the stations would be much smaller and simpler as you would only have three or four carriage highly frequent driverless trains, and the tunnels would be smaller as it would be built to a smaller loading gauge.
2 Likes
At this point we might have to accept that the current QR network is more of a liability than an asset ripe for improvement, not unlike what the NSW Government thought (and still kinda does) about the legacy Sydney network.
I would much prefer to see a full-on new mode for future projects.
3 Likes
Iām not sure I buy that. If you do the Milton dive then you can do day 1 ops with very little money spent west of there (eg Corinda starters). 6-car stations will be fine too, and there only really need to be 4 (City, KP, NF, Hawthorne).
1 Like
That would still open up large and densely populated areas to high quality PT and make travel for Cleveland line passengers so much faster.
Where around Milton would you say is a good place for the tunnel to start?
1 Like
Kangaroo Point would be tricky - it would need to be very deep level as it has to go under the river very soon in both directions.
Not sure how the city station would work. You would really need to interchange with both sectors 1 and 3, so I guess it would need to be somewhere in between and reasonably close to both Albert Street and Central.
It all still seems expensive to me, particularly if they make the stations the cathedrals they are building for CRR. I donāt know why the stations need to be so grand - they are something you generally just want to get in and out of as quickly as you can.
1 Like
We built cathedrals for CRR, Sydney built cathedrals for Metro, I donāt think the mode makes a difference.
I agree KP would be tricky but I think it would be politically unavoidable. City alignment under Edward St.
ICRCS had the dive actually outbound of Milton (parallel to Eagle Tce). A mutual acquaintance of @OzGamer and I actually has a plan which puts the dive inbound of Milton, which is what Iām relying on above.
2 Likes
Why not use Corinda-Yeerongpilly, and the Dutton Park-Buranda as the route?
The line doesnāt need to enter the CBD.
1 Like