good luck to anyone fighting the newstead nimbys to make that pier usable again 
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I would add that I think it is important that reasonable Brisbane River access is retained up to the edge of the CBD for tourism purposes - be that to allow the visitation of tall ships like the Young Endeavour, or even the full Endeavour replica which has visited Brisbane in the past, or the ability to host visiting superyachts on occasion (or, you know, for Clive Palmer to take in Riverfire from his.)
The Brisbane doesn’t provide the greatest level of access to the CBD - we’re never going to have major cruise ships docked against the Brisbane city skyline like what happens in Sydney - but I would strongly warn against the construction of any downstream bridges that reduce overall river accessibility and, in turn, the ability to monetise that river access.
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An opening green bridge would be a good compromise. The default position for that bridge would very much be “down” and for the very limited number of vessels that would need to transit that can be scheduled so as not to occur during the peaks. Route 60 extension to the Bulimba fiveways here we come…
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Yeah, looks like an opening bridge is the best compromise at the moment
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Can anything go wrong with building this style of pedestrian bridge? I get its a car bridge in the image, but a similar design could be for a pedestrian bridge from Newstead to Bulimba.
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You can do this to provide access for cyclists, but it also elongates the distance pedestrians have to travel. For this design to be done effectively, it would require stairs & a lift directly the main spans for pedestrians & those with impaired movement to have easy access.
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Both the Kurilpa Bridge and the new Yanma Bridge at Boggo Road use variations of this type of structure, and it does work, but it depends how tall a bridge you are looking at (even an operable bridge would need to offer a reasonable closed height clearance). Neither of those other bridges have to get all that high off the ground.
These structures do require a relatively large amount of land area to build - that car equivalent looks to take up a city block or so - so even for a pedestrian bridge, you could be taking up a fair chunk of parkland with it, and it wouldn’t be feasible for putting a direct bridge between Commercial Road and Oxford Street, for example.
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Maybe I’m misremembering, but didn’t the Guyatt Park proposal have its loop half in the river?
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Why stop there? I think extending it to Morningside rail might not be the worst outcome.
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There has been numerous studies and government feedback on this and they conclude that the span off the river at that location is too wide to be feasible. (Tenerife - Bulimba)
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As much as I’d love a bridge between teneriffe and bulimba, we cannot ignore the fact that the cross river ferries are a pretty good replacement for it.
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On top of the Cross River Ferries, you can also snag a lift across the river on City Cat services as well, which helps.
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They’re really popular these days and it’s very hard to get your bike onto one (they will wave you away). We need at least one crossing somewhere between the Gateway and the Story Bridge.
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Would increasing the ferry service capacity be a far more fesiable and reasonably cost effective strategy to address this?
Of course a bridge provides an immediate and 24/7 access but close to that could possibly be achieved with ferries.
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Looks like it did on the West End side
On a separate note, I’m still mad about this bridge being cancelled. Bring it back!
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Based on the green bridge data elsewhere in the CBD, they’re extremely well used and can be used 24/7. So longer term a ferry never competes for this sort of crossing, particularly if you want to argue for more density either side of the river here. Short term yeh absolutely probably a justification for more ferry services given the popularity on weekends with 50c fares. Also any bridge would spur better bike and walking corridors on both sides (New Farm and the Valley are good candidates for the expanded CBD protected bikeway since the Riverloop is increasingly hostile to e-mobility and doesn’t really exist from the CBD to HSW anymore).
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