But I do see the 330s get quite a load of passengers between Chermside and RBWH due to the non-stop route; implying that there would be the demand for more express-running buses that link the city to Chermside and primarily serve the suburbs north of Chermside.
Or alternatively, the 330 would be running on the Northern Busway to combine with the 340 to provide a combined frequency of 5-7.5 min alongside the betro to Chermside. However, I’m not really fond with this solution as this would increase traffic on the Northern Busway, significantly lengthen journey times on the 330 (culling the main appeal of the route), and that the suburbs between Chermside and RBWH would be well served by the betro. So I’d prefer to see the 340 and 330 run express from Chermside to RBWH to serve their main areas north of Chermside. Meanwhile, the betro will provide a decent service to the suburbs the BUZes express past.
A train equivalent of this would be to have the GC and SC trains stop all stations to their termini, all while the Beenleigh and Redcliffe trains serve the intermediate stations as well. It would increase the service on the stations from Dutton Park to Holmview and from Virginia to Lawnton, but this will severely drag out the journey times for passengers travelling to and from GC and SC (even though I am for adding a few more stops on the 3-track corridors to allow for more capacity on the rail corridors).
I don’t get around the northside that often but my thoughts on Chermside-City (which applies to most of Brisbane):
Route Roles
As typical for Brisbane the biggest issue in my view is mixed/blurred route roles.
I’m a big believer in the philosophy of each route having a clear role in the network.
BNBN has made positives steps towards this.
Traditionally Brisbane has had many routes which are very local “backstreet” services in the outer suburbs then join the main roads as a trunk service through the inner-suburbs. While this looks good for metrics like average passengers per trip/hour and improves local service, it pulls down the whole network.
When each route has a clear role then responsive service is easy to provide. If there’s overcrowding on the inner segment you can address through high capacity vehicles (HCV) or additional frequencies at it without constraints/wastage of the local components. While inbound you can always add short running trips, outbound is a lot harder and clear route roles means less waste. Similarly during events (I’m thinking Riverfire or NYE) or crisis (COVID, flood, potential fuel rationing), you can easily add or remove to the core network without touching local routes e.g. Post-BNBN you could easily run extra 185 after an event, any backstreet closure or flooding would not impact the trunk service, a reduced minimum viable network could be introduced without getting into a tangle of local routes and unintended consequences.
Similarly clear route roles makes the network more legible (simpler maps, less routes to consider), easier to learn (local routes fade into the background and left major routes, e.g. 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C, etc)
Vision
Gympie/Lutwyche:
Chermside Trunk/Core (333) - Current 333 alignment with 338 merged in. Single main route/stopping pattern with frequency bumped to a base of at worst every 10min and at least the partial introduction of HCV (Layover is done but I imagine the interchange is still the bottleneck). For Valley transfer at Lutwyche (348) or RBWH
Chermside & Beyond Express (330) - Current 330 alignment. Non-stop RBWH-Chermside. Increase frequency (or HCV) as required
Inner-all-stops (348) - Current 348 alignment.
Outer-local (334) - Connects to 333, 348 but would not continue to City
Inner-local (347, 321)
Others:
335 - Split at Chermside.
325 - Split at Chermside. Reroute southern portion to terminate Ashgrove
320 - Split Eagle Junction with overlap so both halves end at Toombul (Inner bit via Buckland Rd)
Those not listed would become cross-town feeder.
Status-quo Notes
Route 330 - Solid alignment south of Telegraph Rd (Direct through-route). Shame Zillmere rail interchange is weak. I’m not sold that the Bracken Ridge alignment is perfect but it would be hard to change now and at least there is the Barrett St shops to provide some bi-directional demand
Route 340 - I don’t think it should have been BUZ’d in it’s current form as a traditional CityXpress style route. Chermside - Aspley - Carseldine is an important connection but the current alignment is too indirect to serve it well and the size of its unique catchment (i.e. north of Chermside) doesn’t justify a direct City connection when it has Carseldine, Aspley and Chermside logical and notable transfer points.
Route 338 (ex-370) - I think it had a place but given the relatively recent and very justified conversion of almost all stops between Chermside and Kedron Brook to be on the “CityXpress” stopping pattern, its only real purpose is to provide one seat trips into the Valley and northern-CBD. As such I believe it should be mostly amalgamated into the 333 (Core) and 348 (Inner-section) to boost frequencies there with the remaining local services to supplement (334/321). This still allows single-seat Valley south of Lutwyche (348) or transfers at multiple points including RBWH
Route 334 - Another typical legacy route which is extremely local near the end but provides a trunk service to the city. Similar to the BNBN approach should become a feeder service, potentially into Albion station if facilities existed.
As a sidenote: I would merge the 338 with the 77 and 26 in one go, with the final route number being 370.
370: Eight Mile Plains - Chermside Interchange
All 77 stops to Windsor
Joins the 26 at RBWH, then all stops to Garden City
Makes final stop at 8MP like the 77
The reason why I’m also taking the 338 with it is mainly as a way to get more buses to operate the service every 15-20 minutes all day.
The service would solve the issue of providing Gympie Rd passengers with access to the Valley, while the 333, 340 and 348 would still serve the city.
(The other thing I’ve been thinking of that feels like low-hanging fruit is extending the 330 to Sandgate station, but that’s just a mere thought of mine.)
Making the 340 run express from the City to Chermside will definitely be an improvement for the route. There is only one bus route that does that (330), and it runs every 10-15min. Once the 333 becomes a Betro that runs every 3-5min, then the corridor between Chermside and RBWH is well served enough to justify the 340 running express from Chermside to RBWH. Furthermore, since the 330 gets quite a bit of patronage for the express running to Chermside, having another route that adds to the express services will further serve the demand for express running to Chermside.
So basically, the 340 will become (if not already) a vital link between the Redcliffe train line, 345, 330, and the 333 (maybe to become Betro), and that it will boost the express services between the City and Chermside if the 333 become a Betro.
I’d rather see the 310 getting cut to Sandgate station from the City, making it a decent feeder service for the Sandgate-Brighton areas for the Shorncliffe line. Currently, the 310 is just a half-arsed copy of the Shorncliffe line south of Sandgate that has no competition with the train line. So why not just make it serve the Shorncliffe line instead? The same can be said for the numerous petty bus routes that are merely non-functional copies of train lines.
Definitely the case between Zillmere Road and Toombul Road where Sandgate Road passes through industrial wasteland and big box stores. However, when it reaches the places where there is housing, the areas with housing where Sandgate Road passes through is decently close to the Shorncliffe line and Virginia station.
The only area that is quite a bit of a walk to the nearest train station is from Nudgee College and College Green to Boondall station. However, there is another bus route that connects with Boondall station that passes through those suburbs, that being the 325. The 325 is another practically useless bus route that links the City to Boondall via Chermside. I’d rather prefer see the 325 get cut to Zillmere, so the bus route could provide an orbital link between the Redcliffe line and the 330 to the Shorncliffe line.
That being said, the 310 and 325 only run hourly for most of the day, so people who live alongside Sandgate Road would rather go to a Shorncliffe line station than catch those horrendous bus routes, so cutting the 310 to Sandgate and the 325 to Zillmere will definitely help those bus routes to integrate better with the Shorncliffe line (and the Redcliffe line and 330 to an extent). In fact there are so many redundant and infrequent citybound bus routes that could be better used feeding passengers to major trunk PT corridors.
I still do not agree on principle of leaving such a major artery without bus service for most of its length with the excuse of “there’s a rail line close to it”.
Capillarity is paramount for a good transport network and removing for the sake of it is not a good idea.
Again: Toombul or Eagle Junction would serve that purpose well without too much trouble.
I was thinking about the fact that longer bus routes will require more buses to maintain a decent frequency. If BCC will have enough buses to spare when the 310 terminates at Sandgate, then I would have no problem seeing the 310 continue to Toombul instead. Some math could be done to determine how many buses would be needed to maintain a decent frequency if the 310 would go to Toombul compared to Sandgate.
330, have look at the 326 thats between carseldine to warra (telegraph/denham)
Tbh im al in for bnbn rebalancing like 326/327 to be chopped up and redistributed to see what untersects better ie Strathpine-Shorncliffe crosstown feeder
Coming back to this.. Are there any data-heads who could do some analysis on this question? @alexjago ? @ari ?
It remains highly relevant because the Council administration is now leaning very heavily on the “surge” in bus trips allegedly generated by the Metro and BNBN, without ever explaining why they believe these are “new” journeys or simply a transition between one-seat → two-seat journeys.
The purpose of this analysis wouldn’t be to undermine the concept of two-seat journeys, just to puncture the spin that’s letting them get away with claiming they’ve already dramatically improved PT in Brisbane despite the very lacklustre increase to services in the BNBN.
This is more relevant than ever with increasingly probably failure of the “Rapid Business Case” to get any Metro expansions built by 2032.
Edit: I think the questions to answer are: Of the 10% increase in July 2025 - Jan 2026 over the same 7-month period in 2024-2025,
what proportion of that increase was growth in 2-seat or 3-seat journeys (i.e. 2 or 3 “trips” separated by a transfer)
did 1-seat journeys go up or down?
can we learn anything from origin-destination data that sheds light on the above questions?
This is probably a question you could answer but unfortunately it’d probably be above my skill level - definitely keen to see the results though.
From memory the public data is all aggregated and I imagine it’d be quite hard to determine whether many people are transferring at a station vs people getting off and new people arriving and getting the next ‘leg’ as such. Would presumably be much easier with the actual raw data but no chance in hell Translink is going to hand that over since it could be used for all kinds of stalking/generally privacy breaching purposes.
Agree, the raw data would end up identifying individual people and would be in breach of the privacy laws, that data would have to remain only available to the Planners themselves internally at TransLink.
Probably the best TransLink could do is provide the percentage transferring on particular routes and percentage travelling overall, and/or numbers. It wouldn’t be a clear picture but at least it’d provide a general idea on what’s happening. It wouldn’t show though how many are transferring at Buranda and continuing to the city via the inner city busway stations or those transferring onto PAH/UQ services. It wouldn’t also show who’s transferring then getting off at particular inner city busway stations.
As noted we don’t have access to linked-trips data (TL planners definitely do). Best we can do is “Pre BNBN this route had XXX passengers going to the city. With BNBN it was truncated to Foobar Station and alightings there have increased to YYY. Post BNBN, city boardings at Foobar Station are up by ZZZ.”
Thank you @ari@STB and @alexjago - it’s helpful to understand the linked-trip data isn’t public.
Reflecting a bit - I think the most important question for assessing the impact of Metro and BNBN (according to the Lord Mayor’s logic) is actually the simplest one: What was the change in bus journeys (rather than their component bus trips) since BNBN vs before?
It sounds like Translink could generate that number quite easily.
From Monday 8 June, there’ll be minor timetable changes to some Logan routes to >better match bus arrival and departure times - so that you can travel with confidence.