As from yesterday that Bikeway along Melbourne Street is still not open. I wonder if it opened today?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah I know the state pushed hard for Ipswich to become a second CBD but I am unsure how that is going
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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.