I think that this is something that should urgently be brought to attention with members that I haven’t yet seen discussed.
Besides Brisbane airports’ bizarre situation with public transport, of the main domestic and international airports in Queensland only the gold coast(OOL), and sunshine coast(MCY) seem to have a direct public transport connection with the 777 bus for OOL and the 622 bus for MCY, while the other major international airport in QLD Cairns (CNS) does not despite handling far more passengers and being within the top 10 airports.
While major domestic airports in areas with translink services like Townsville(TSV), Bundaberg(BDB), and Maryborough (HVB) also don’t have any bus connections that don’t involve taking some kind of long hike, with Rockhampton(ROK) and Mackay(MKY), both much smaller than CNS and TSV, do have such a connection with the 407/403 bus, and the 303 bus respectively. To me this situation seems utterly ridiculous, while public transport bus services may not always be the best fit for a lot of travellers, surely the fact that these airports are major job centres would justify such a route being established and having some kind of affordable, easy, no need to book, option for solo travelers to transfer to the town cbd would surely be seen positively in these towns where tourism is often an industry of major significance.
For many of these towns it is not even a 10 minute drive like in the case of cairns and surely would be almost trivial to implement quickly with some route adjustments. Even an hourly bus from these locations would probably suffice to airport staff who may not have a car or a license. This just seems utterly ridiculous that it isn’t the case already. Is this just the airports wanting parking money damn the economic and practical benefits of such a move?
Yes, I was dissapointed that there is no bus servicing the airport in Cairns when I was visiting in what would otherwise be a reasonably good bus system. Definitely needs rectifying.
I’ve been advocating for years to get a local bus diverted to Cairns Airport. Palm Cove or the University buses could have a stop added at the airport rather than direct shuttles to and from the airport from the CBD. Having every second Palm Cove service together with every second University service to the airport terminals could do the trick.
Why haven’t they done it, it seems so trivial, is it the taxi/limousine operators lobbying against it? because I can’t think of anything else other than incompetence.
Most people aren’t travelling to the airport and don’t need to have what I estimate to be a 15-20 minute penalty added to their trip from the north into Cairns, with 2 separate terminals to service. The driving time alone is about 10 minutes in and out from the highway let alone dealing with 2 separate stops needed and passengers boarding and alighting with luggage.
Simplest solutions to me would be to either run a new Cairns Central to Airport route, or divert one or more of the southern suburbs routes so they enter the CBD from the south (ie use Bunda St and Spence St to get to the Lake St bus station and then keep going north). The latter solution would also make it easier to get to the hospitals from the south. I’d implement it as part of a timetable upgrade that sees all the southern routes run full time instead of there being combined versions, with a combined 15 minute daytime headway from the airport to the end of the common stretch of the 140/150 at Bentley Park. (A dedicated service on the other hand could be run with buses fitted with more luggage space.)