this was talked about quite a bit on the old rbot forms.
With the metro there is a massive missed opportunity to move buses away from the city to suburban routes, such as routes from Ipswich to Logan, Sandgate to Strathpine, Towong to Everton Park, Etc
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Welcome to the forum - Any proposals for out policy platform see the media section. 
In theory the âsavedâ capacity is being redistributed as part of Brisbane's New Bus Network that BCC has planned. The issue is that the new network is redistributing the budget savings rather than the bus availability savings. Given the Metro isnât really saving that much money, there isnât really that much being put back into the surrounding suburbs.
Operators have service areas, and many of the areas youâre suggesting do not fall in BCCs operating area.
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The service areas are determined by Translink (in theory). The issue is that BCC has a lot of influence on the structure and plan of the bus network within Brisbane. Itâs not surprise that BCC doesnât give a flying crap about neighbouring councils, so they obviously wonât use their influence to push for increased services outside the BCC LGA.
A Sandgate to Strathpine service would be amazing. I also think a better service from Bracken Ridge to Strathpine would be good too considering the fact that the 327 is quite infrequent and doesnât run at all on a Sunday.
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I agree that any bus capacity free up by Metro will most likely be deployed in Brisbane, but there are plenty of areas lacking frequent buses within the BCC area that really need them. Balmoral and the Centenary suburbs are two that immediately come to mind. Service north of Chermside (bar the 330/340) is pretty woeful, too.
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Must be part of a wholesale Network BRT-based Redesign not added to an already complex, confusing, illegible network!
https://forum.bettertransportqueensland.org/uploads/short-url/tEj4PF1KlLZaLnTOgzjPnkgxemU.pdf
agreed
Two potential ideas I had for the future where having a part busway tunnel under UQ to Indropilly. and having a bus/pedestrian green bridge from Tenerife to Builmba.
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Feel free to propose these for the 2025 Policy Platform (see the Media Section in the left menu)
Have you checked out the UQ St Lucia Masterplan.
SmartBus
Melbourneâs Smartbus is an orbital bus service that runs at high frequency.
It is a patronage oriented service that shows reasonably high patroange.
Notes
Anyone got the archives from when RBOT did a bus reform proposal?
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The 2014-15 era one? Thatâs Metroâs baby and heâd probably have the most info on it.
Archives of the RBoT forum are in preparation - I was able to do a scrape of arguable quality and I was also able to archive many docs and images hosted by Bob, as well as many user attachments.
We also made schematic maps of specific routes. I should still have all my work and the other map-maker is also still around. Funnily enough he has changed his pseudonym several times and I no longer post under mine.
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That would be it 
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We are due to do our own bus review as it was 10+ years ago.
This could be all mode and placed on our website as a mapbox or google map.
If we make it as easy as possible for authorities to see what we want, they might give it to us 
Weâve always wanted authorities to produce a network plan, they havenât really released one, so itâs a space we can step into with our own.
What are your thoughts on this Wolfbow? Would you perhaps be keen to lead a review?
I wouldnât be able to consulte with every single person but we as a group can try our best to make a proposal that gives as many people access!
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Well, we didnât consult everyone. The map was made and then a survey went out with feedback. Adjustments were made after that.
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Transportation
How Did This Suburb Figure Out Mass Transit?
Transit ridership is off the charts in Brampton, Ontario, despite its typical low-density suburban layout. Hereâs how the city got residents to get on the bus.
A Brampton family gets on the bus in 2015.
Photographer: Rick Madonik/Toronto Star via Getty Images
By Jonathan English
15 April 2025 at 00:59 GMT+10
- Brampton, Ontario, a suburban city with low-density development and wide roads, has achieved high transit ridership (226,500 bus riders on an average weekday) by providing frequent bus service, including core routes that run every 5 minutes.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- The cityâs approach, which focused on upgrading existing bus service rather than investing in expensive capital projects, led to a 288% increase in ridership from 2004 to 2018, with a relatively low public subsidy.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- The success of Bramptonâs transit system demonstrates that frequent and reliable bus service can attract riders even in suburban areas, and that decent local bus service should be a priority for cities considering big capital projects like light rail or subway systems.
Summary by Bloomberg
It is taken as a truism in the world of urban planning that successful transit requires what is known as âtransit-supportive developmentââ a high-density combination of concentrated destinations and walkable streets. But what if I told you that some of the highest transit usage in North America can be found in a place with none of those things? Itâs a Canadian city full of suburban cul-de-sacs, Big Box retail complexes and wide arterial roads.
To be clear, none of these things are good for transit ridership. All of them do indeed make transit less appealing and less pleasant to use. What this place shows, though, is that even in a place without any of the supposed prerequisites, you can still get tens of thousands of people to choose to ride the bus. We donât have to wait until all our suburbs are rebuilt to become European-style walkable utopias; itâs possible to get people out of their cars in a matter of months simply by running buses more frequently.
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Brampton, Ontario, is a large industrial suburb of Toronto, indistinguishable from many across North America. Six-lane-wide arterial roads lined with strip malls course through residential developments full of detached single-family homes with garages. The city is also home to many factories and distribution centers â massive warehouses with blank walls surrounded by parking lots. Yet, with a population of about 700,000, Brampton has 226,500 bus riders on an average weekday.
Commuters board a bus in downtown Brampton in 2024.Photographer: Mike Campbell/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Compare that to Orange County, California, with 3.2 million people and 112,000 daily bus riders. Orange County has a similar suburban built form, and its population density in core areas like Santa Ana is higher than that of Brampton. Comparison with other areas is just as stark: Columbus, Ohio, with about 900,000 residents, has only 34,100 bus riders per day; the Pace bus network, serving 5.7 million residents of suburban Chicago, averages 56,900 riders per day.
What explains the enormous divergence? It doesnât have anything to do with any US-Canadian cultural differences â Bramptonians used to be as reluctant to ride transit as American suburbanites. Quite simply, Brampton provides service that is good enough to make getting around by transit reasonable for people who have other transportation options â a group that transit agencies often dub âchoice ridersâ â as well as for people with no other choice.
In Orange County, like many suburbs, buses typically run once per hour and rarely more than every half hour. The last trips of the night are often too early to be usable by someone working closing shift at the mall, let alone someone coming home from the bar. Weekend service is even more limited. In Brampton, by contrast, core bus routes run as frequently as every five minutes, with express and local service, while even secondary routes typically run at least every half hour well into the late evening.
This makes an enormous difference. In many places, you donât need to even bother checking a schedule before beginning your trip. High frequency also makes transfers feasible, meaning that people can make anywhere-to-anywhere journeys rather than being constrained to going to wherever their local bus happens to go. Nobody wants to be stuck for a half hour or an hour at a desolate suburban bus stop waiting for a transfer.
Brampton wasnât always a transit success story. Twenty years ago, it was a fairly typical suburban city, with infrequent buses, low ridership and a growing traffic congestion problem as its population swelled. The municipal government considered a pricey light rail plan, but the then-head of local agency Brampton Transit, Sue Connor, had a cheaper idea: Upgrade the existing bus service to a high-frequency network, so people could count on all-day service throughout the city, including separately branded core routes with upgraded buses and shelters. Once the buses were busy, later, the city might upgrade further to bus rapid transit service.
The upshot was 288% ridership growth from 2004 to 2018.
It helped that the cost of these improvements was gradual and in the millions of dollars, rather than the billions that big capital projects like a light rail system demand. Steady increases in ridership (and therefore revenue) meant that Brampton Transitâs level of public subsidy did not rise significantly despite the massive increase in service. The percentage subsidy basically remained unchanged at about 50% â considerably lower than many agencies.
Drilling down into the data, the effect of service improvement is even clearer. On one route, a 54% increase in service on Sunday (a shift to a consistent half-hourly schedule) brought a 177% increase in ridership. On Saturdays, where there was no change in service, ridership rose only 18%, demonstrating that the increased ridership was not primarily by neighborhood change.
The Brampton case clearly shows that there is no such thing as tailoring service to demand â demand is not fixed. The phenomenon of induced demand is as real for transit as it is for highways: If you provide a more attractive service, more people will use it. If you cut service, riders will disappear.
In 2019, Brampton Transit launched the ZĂźm express service on designated routes, with heated transit shelters.Photographer: Rick Madonik/Toronto Star via Getty Imagew
Rather than pursuing expensive capital projects right away, Brampton built ridership incrementally through improving the basic local bus network. Today, the cityâs about to break ground on a big light rail extension, but unlike many such projects, the bus route it will replace is already carrying more people than many long-running light rail lines. The strong local bus network that had been put in place over the last several decades will feed even more train riders.
Read more: How US Infrastructure Plans Shrank in Ambition
How was a coalition created to support transit? One important factor has been the strong support of the cityâs many industrial employers, whose workers rely on transit to get to jobs. Good off-peak service is especially important since distribution centers do not operate on a 9-to-5 basis. âThe Brampton business community is completely supportive of improved transit,â said Jaipaul Massey-Singh, chief executive officer of the Brampton Board of Trade. âItâs essential for businesses to be able to get workers to their workplaces without adding to congestion on the crowded streets.â
This comes as no surprise when you see dozens of people lined up at remote bus stops in front of warehouses. Some Amazon fulfillment centers caused so much bus crowding that it provoked anxieties during the Covid pandemic. In many suburbs, these kinds of industrial areas often see little or no transit service at all, so unsurprisingly there are few riders.
What lessons can be drawn from Bramptonâs example? Firstly, buses can draw riders even in places that donât look like traditional prewar transit-friendly neighborhoods, as long as service is frequent. Secondly, itâs important to recognize that many, if not most, potential transit riders are not commuting to a 9-to-5 job, so transit needs to be usable all day, every day. Thirdly, itâs as much a victory to get a household to decide they donât need a second or third car because taking the bus is a viable option than it is to get a household to go completely car-free.
Finally, any city contemplating big capital projects like a light rail or subway system should consider decent local bus service â running everywhere, frequently, all day, every day â an essential prerequisite.
â Jonathan English is a writer and consultant on infrastructure and transportation policy. He is a fellow at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University
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