Brisbane Metro

Bus jam inbound this morning from South Bank at least (I was on the train so all I could see). Three M2s in the queue from South Bank station to the Melbourne St portal. Such a farce.

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As someone who does the Boggo Rd to UQ trip each day, I suspect the number of M2 passengers is a combination of larger numbers travelling to UQ each day (there’s a return to high levels of on-campus students, and students attend more often early in the semester), as well as more people using the M2 because it provides the increased capacity on that end of the route to UQ. Most people boarding at Boggo Rd will get on whichever bus has space for them.
I also observe a lot of students who are new to Brisbane, or new to buses, who use an app and only catch the bus number listed in the app, ignoring other buses going to the same destination. If the app tells them to get the M2 from Boggo Rd to UQ, some students will ignore the other buses going to UQ until the M2 arrives. I suspect over the semester they will get to learn that the other buses also go to UQ.

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This is actually one of the failings of the many route use of the busway! Instead of catching the 1 or 2 routes to UQ people use an app to find the next bus but that can ignore the other bus that comes first.

Just another example to support BRT route design. The M1 should run east west along Old Cleveland Rd not duplicate the M2.

Hi,
As someone who commutes by bus to UQ, I can tell you that running the m1 from southeast busway onto old clevelend road would be a disaster.

I am first going to assume that in your scenario the m1 would replace the 209 and 28 routes since you want to decrease the number of routes. I am also going to assume the m1 would run from eight mile plains to carindale by turning off the southeast busway onto the eastern busway towards stones corner.

Having the m1 routed this way would turn buranda station into a gaping hole for the entire busway network. A lot of students either get on a bus at Buranda, or to either the east (Stones Corner, Coorparoo, Carindale, etc), or from the south (sunnybank, eight mile plains, loganholme, etc). This scenario would mean that students at Buranda would either have to get on the 169 or 139 bus, of which only 1 even operates on weekends, or go all the way to mater hill to get on the m2, while any students south of Buranda would have to transfer to the 169 or 139 bus at Greenslopes or Holland park west which don’t have any transfer connections to rail, local, or just non busway bus routes at least to my knowledge, or they would have to go all the way to mater hill to cqtch the m2, and they wouldn’t be able to use the m1 since it would have to turn off the SEB before Buranda station, and since the m2 has to turn off before Buranda station to go to the university it can’t stop at Buranda either. While anyone coming from the east would also have to spend about 10 minutes going away from the university to greenslopes and then backtracking back up the busway on the 169/139 to get to the university.

All together this would mean forcing everyone who wants to go to the university who is not coming from the north or west of the university to get onto the 169 bus which runs much less frequently than either metro routes, while also screwing over everyone to the east of Buranda with backtracking, while also at the same time forcing them and those at the student accommodation that’s built on top of the buranda station onto the 169 bus with everyone else who is not taking the m2 at mater hill. It would also prevent translink from removing a bunch of bus routes including the 169 and 139 which would still be needed, and would still also go to the university which would still confuse students who don’t realize that those buses also go the university.

Had my routes ass about

The m2 should run from UQ (or beyond) to Cleveland.

The m1 runs Eight Miles Plains (only because there was not foresight to run to Springwood or beyond) to RBWH.

North needs a change (oh the horror) at Buranda as does the South (same platform)

29 can stay until the Wooloongabba m2 inline station is built

The metros seem to have the chime enabled again, heard it on every one I’ve been on today.

9038 also in service since yesterday.

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That’s good as I was going to ask about that, because the last few times I had caught it they weren’t on. :+1:

M1 doesn’t run to RBWH - like the 111 it only goes as far as Roma Street.

But it should.

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I believe the recharger is located at Roma Street. Not sure if there is one at RBWH?

There’s at least one Metro layover bay in Ernie’s Roundabout (just past RBWH at ground level), including fast-charging.

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The charging infrastructure is at the RBWH layover (M2 northern end), Countess Street layover (M1 northern end), UQ Lakes (M2 southern end) and the Rochedale depot (close to the M1 southern end).

Don’t count on either route being extended at either end with the current vehicles. I understand the cycle times are intimately connected with the locations of the chargers.

All they had to do was put some trolleywires up and they wouldn’t have had this issue, as the vehicles could have charged while in-motion.

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^^ I was wondering how tightly the charging cycles were calculated for the LighTrams.

Looks like platform 3 will be open in the next week or two.

I honestly didn’t think that they would pull that area together as quickly as they have!