in thousands of other cities around the world they have…
hundreds anyway…
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Sheraton supported the construction of a tower on the site, many Moons ago and expanding their then hotel operation. Given the typically cyclical nature of property development, it didn’t proceed at the time.
Why must everything be done by the private sector? Why not the government themselves? Under this government I concede that won’t happen, but it can in future. Sometimes the government needs to do it themselves because the private sector can’t or won’t. I would apply this to providing affordable housing too.
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Building over an operating railway is the most expensive way to do affordable housing I can think of.
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You’re conflating two completely different things there. Go read what I wrote again, it says nothing about affordable housing being built above a railway.
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I think the point is it doesn’t really make sense to build over a railway when you could build the same building much cheaper across the road.
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We’re talking about sinking a railway underground because there’s a shortage of inner city land. If there was ample inner-city land then I’m sure we’d be seeing massive new developments everywhere in the inner city.
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It’s still cheaper to buy land with low density buildings and knock them down than to build over an active railway.
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But developers have not been given the option. Send out a tender for over station designs at Bowen Hills, Albion, Nundah, and see what comes back. Include a redesign of the stations which all three desperately need, and if it is a worse outcome then don’t progress.
There is an argument that development over the station improves outcomes for residential/commercial uses as well as rail users with a simultaneous upgrade of station facilities.
Sinking a railway by putting it into a tunnel is somewhat different to building structures over an active surface level railway.
Sinking a railway is a project that would be undertaken as a Government-facilitated, Government-funded project, and it’s unlikely the Government would consider this unless there were substantial network benefits to doing so (like the elevated rail sections to LGCLR).
If we go right back to the start of this discussion, the concept being discussed was largely about selling station air rights to developers and expecting that they would jump at the chance to develop above stations, where this is almost certainly not the case!
We genuinely need to bring back the good ol public works department. They all effectively built this country as we know it, alongw ith usually being on time, under budget and with decent workers rights and conditions.
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Ok seems a lot of people do not understand a poo load of different requirements to build over the rail network in the SEQ area. If this was say Gatton Laidley Toowoomba Cairns the only thing they need to deal with is getting access to the network and pay for the closures needed to start the project to a point they will no longer need a closure to stop trains. In Seq you need the closures first up then you need to do the same thing as about but on top you need continual OHLE isolations this is not a QR law this is a Electric safety law which applies to all electrical entities. Who will pay for these extended closures and isolations for these dream land projects as they will not want to just work on a scheduled closure program they will want it long term and need that time to get work done fast as thats how they make money. Then you will say but CRR closures take extended closures yes but they are paid for by the project who is paid for by government so thats how they get away with theirs. Then you have freight providers who have their trains paths already set up for their train crews. Its not just a set up site and start building over the top of a network. Every person on site must be inducted into the RIW program as they are classed as rail safety workers due to the nature of the job site then you bring in RSNR the electrical safety act then the cost of site access network shut downs chipping in costs for bus ops and staffing of these closures for getting on site each day.
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^Exactamundo.
The only way developing above a railway line these days will work is if you have a good reason to sink the line into a tunnel, which is even more disruptive.
The other big 4 cities have some prospect of this working, or have made it work recently to some extent, at their biggest stations. Yagan Square in Perth, Fed Square in Melbourne, the RAH and adjacent developments in Adelaide, the various proposals to build over Sydney Terminal, etc. Every one of these was and is a lot more buildable than anything we can turn out up here given the surrounding terrain and built form. The equivalents up here (Toowong Village, Sofitel, Valley Metro) are all quite old comparatively and not going to be repeated.
Physically possible up here at places like Roma Street, northern end of Central and either end of the Valley, yes. Economically irresponsible, also yes. No developer is going to touch these because they will lose squillions and probably won’t be able to find a builder willing to do the same. Half my clients have set up their own construction arms just to be able to do anything sizable because the Hutchinsons and similar of the world won’t touch the work anymore. Involving QR or DTMR is a surefire way to make it slower and more expensive to do anything. If you are doing apartments it is also a great way of helping ensure all your sales reach the 5 1/2 year statutory sunset date and buyers have the option to walk away scott free.
The State has no reason to spend those squillions itself when it can build its own projects next to a railway for cheaper than over it, or just subsidise other work.
Best I think we can hope for is better integration of stations into their surrounding built environment as they are progressively upgraded (eg South Bank, Milton, Albion, Nundah etc), and some decent OSDs at the CRR underground stations.
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