As from yesterday that Bikeway along Melbourne Street is still not open. I wonder if it opened today?
What could have been
Sorry but no, it couldnât have been. When âBrisbane Metroâ was announced, there was never an intention, plan, funding or political willpower to build a fully underground rail based subway system. Even in the earliest iterations, it was a rubber tired system on the existing busway alignment. The system youâre looking at would cost 10x what council spent.
Ignore the name. What we got was a busway upgrade and Iâm fine with that.
There is no way what youâve posted âcould have beenâ. Maybe if youâd said âwhat SHOULD have beenâ, Iâd agree with you. I lament the burying of the âBrisbane Subwayâ concept floated by the Bligh government. But letâs be realistic, what weâve ended up with is a good stop gap for the cost.
Is building high capacity rail ever going to get cheaper, even relative to general inflation? Not for a good while, I wouldnât think. So if we have the population to justify a proper underground metro (and Iâd say we do), the earlier we get to building it, the better.
Of course, thatâs more than what a council can afford, even one the size of BCC. And more big infrastructure projects in Brisbane that are funded by the state will lead to a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by regional and rural residents complaining that they never get anything spent on them (which isnât true, but feelings seem to be more important than the truth when it comes to political decisions). And that matters when Brisbane doesnât have a solid majority of the state population like Sydney, Melbourne and Perth do.
So unless the federal government decides to start funding more urban rail projects, I donât see us getting a proper underground metro for decades to come. Better learn to enjoy buses, everyone.
As much as I would like to see a Brisbane Metrorail, the city doesnât really have something like a Parramatta, that is to say: a second CBD.
Sure, we have some major shopping areas away from the CBD like Sunnybank, Garden City, Chermside, Indooroopilly, but those are most certainly gonna stay like that: shopping areas. They are not going to transform into cities of their own.
The best shot Bris has to get a proper metro in my view is a full conversion of QRâs future Sector 3 to driverless, by removing level crossings, upgrading stations and separating the rail corridor in its entirety from the rest of the network.
But thatâs a matter for a separate post.
Metro(bus) is a good concept that only needs more frequency on the feeders. Bump those up to 15-20 minutes and youâre probably set for a good while.
Yeah I know the state pushed hard for Ipswich to become a second CBD but I am unsure how that is going
In some ways, Springfield Central is progressing more as a satellite CBD than the Ipswich CBD is.
That said, I think Southport and Maroochydore are the two places best positioned to form secondary CBDs in the SEQ region.
Sounds like metro got a good stress test today with tens of thousands of commuters trying to get out of the city.
From people I talked to, apparently they were so full that the doors wouldnât close at times, and on one occasion so many people on board that it tripped some kind of weight/capacity sensor and some passengers had to disembark so it could move.
Reason why Bne Metro is restricted to the Busways.
I wonder if they will take this into account regarding stage 4 of the Gold Coast Light Rail as well?
I doubt that is the reason. The issue I thought was they are too wide to comply with ADRs (2.55m as is normal for Yoorup, which exceeds our local 2.50m limi) to be able to carry passengers on roads. Strictly speaking they are road-legal and registered, but have never been used on a route service off the busway. Thatâs a regulatory issue, not a hardware issue - it was clearly not an issue for the Citaro they trialled some years ago which also would have been 2.55m wide.
The Canberra comments relate to ART vehicles like the one the City of Stirling was trialling in its car park (and which never seems to have actually run on a public road).
The ACT are smart. They are converting existing buses to electric and they embrace light rail; no need for gadgetbahnâs or fake metro autonomous tram buses when you have the real deal - light rail.
I too am skeptical of the claims about the vehicles being too heavy for arterial roads. Note that in Brisbane, zero emissions semitrailers and prime movers are permitted on a lot of roads outside of the inner city, such as Sandgate Rd north of Clayfield, Gympie Rd, Jubilee Ave, Finucane Rd, Stafford Rd, Kessels Rd and so on. And there seems to be a far greater percentage of roads in Canberra that allow B-doubles compared to Brisbane. In regard to weight alone, you would think that the Metro vehicles could run anywhere that a B-double could.
GCLR Stage 4 will probably end up being a busway as per the community consultation
Has ruled out so-called trackless trams similar to the Brisbane Metro
^ The operative word is âsimilar toâ.
So, they likely have not actually tested or made findings specific to the Hess Lightram vehicle series.
It raises questions about the credibility of such claims, particularly when open searches show videos of such vehicles running on ordinary roads and over the same path repeatedly:
or going up viaduct ramps to Airport terminals (Basel, Switzerland);
That would be an absolute disaster that would plague the southern Gold Coast for generations to come.
I canât wait to see the plans for the Burleigh Heads Transit Centre⌠Do they replace the memorial park or the bowls club?
I donât know anything about vehicle weight limit regulations, but for what itâs worth the tare weight of the LighTram 24 is 25.3 tonnes.
Over my dead central Goldy body.