This route exists - the 562 runs from Beenleigh to Loganholme via Holmview (the older part north of Logan River Road), Edens Landing, Bethania and Loganlea/Meadowbrook. Honestly, though, it’s a long, meandering route that seems more intended to take local retirement village residents to the shops (it services five or so retirement villages) but at the same time misses the major local shopping centres between Beenleigh and Waterford (Holmview Central and the Fletcher Road shopping precinct - the 563 services Holmview Central and the 567 services both it and the Fletcher Road precinct, but neither service Edens Landing).
I’d completely disagree. Loganholme is the major terminus bus station for the entire eastern side of Logan - much more of Logan is connected to Loganholme than is to Springwood, especially areas further south and west, and it is also the principal shopping centre for the east of the city. I feel it is vitally important that the city’s all day bus link to the CBD services both Springwood and Loganholme - be that via the Brisbane Metro or the 555.
It would be like terminating the 333 at Kedron Brook Station, and have people fed there from Chermside.
Any attempts to funnel people from Loganholme onto the train at Loganlea would be extremely unpopular, as it would increase travel times considerably. A 555 from Loganholme to its Queen Street terminus takes ~47 minutes (take a few minutes off for the Adelaide Street stops most people use). By comparison, a bus from Loganholme to Loganlea takes 20 minutes, and then the train from Loganlea to Central takes either 40 minutes (express) or 55 minutes (all stations). That’s now 60 minutes/75 minutes - a 25%+ increase in the travel times before taking into account any dwell time between the bus and the train.
This entire area is a testament to poor urban planning. Low-density sprawl everywhere, peninsulas with practically no connections across the river, everything is centred around a pseudo-highway (Logan River Road), the railway line gets few walk up passengers (due to the stations being poorly located and the services all being all-stops crawlers), and the shopping centres seem designed for cars only, treating buses as a nuisance (I mean just look at Holmview central, who on earth thought a bus stop alongside a roundabout was a good idea?)
Despite having had a railway line for a century, all the development has been centred around cars, and so it seems practically impossible for most of the area to ever shift significant mode share away from cars. I suppose there’s some potential for the Bethania station area after the level crossing is eliminated, but at minimum it’d require a lot of redevelopment and a very different stopping pattern for trains.
Basically, the protected area in this area (it extends much beyond this section) is effectively from the roundabout down to where the greenery ends and the road diverges away from Slacks Creek. From memory, the Gossia gonoclada overlay covers only the western side of the road on the banks of the creek for the most part - it crosses over Murrays Road up towards the roundabout, but there’s also the separate Murrays Environmental Reserve on the eastern side.
As a 569 user, I can tell you that would not work at the current 569 frequencies.
The 569 is always mostly full when it leaves Loganholme with few empty seats, but for the services after 7:30am when the frequency drops to one bus every 15 minutes, the buses are literally at standing room only when leaving. The 569’s 15 minute gap matches that of the 555 (07:30, 07:45, 08:00) so both buses end up leaving Loganholme as sardine tins.
I’ve tried catching a 555 from Rochedale in the AM peak, and if the bus isn’t full by that point, it wouldn’t be very far off. The 569 would be the same.
They should also be using more artics and/or double deckers. Same goes for a number of other operators, especially Kinetic GC and SC (on the 600) - although in their case I would be going for artics given the lack of long-distance services that are substantially express running and peak oriented.
Hopefully TransLink got a spot at Griffith University Logan Campus O Week to help promote the 580. Patronage will probably be low for a while until people catch on that this service exists. I’m not concerned about the patronage on it at this stage.
Holmview’s design is a classic developer not consulting with TransLink about how the stop should be set up. Riverlink is another example - I was the Planner for the Ipswich region at the time Riverlink was proposed and we got zero say in the design and location of the bus station, only finding out once the plans had already been approved!
The trouble for Holmview is buses will need to head to Holmview Central then backtrack just to service those shops, and given the geometry of Edens Landing, it’s near impossible to have a logical route that also services Holmview Central without immense backtracking. It’s shocking design and should have never been built where it is. It really does give you an insight that anything PT wise from a developers point if view is seen as a required nuisance, so if they can put in in a spot that makes it difficult to service, then it just keeps car king.
I remember even the shop owners complaining about having a stop outside Victoria Point shops back in the day (circa 2006-7ish), they wanted all the stops removed and placed well away from the shops. They claimed that the bus exhaust fumes was stopping customers coming into their shops! I’m not kidding!
My preferred option for a route that services Edens Landing, the Bethania Shops and Holmview Central would be a route ex-Beenleigh that goes up Castile Cresent similar to current routes, but instead of going up Ivanhoe Drive it goes across to Fletcher Road at the intersection (servicing the Bethania shops), then goes down High Street similar to the route the 567 takes.
However, instead of using the stupidly narrow Grand Terrace, I would look at either taking it along the equally narrow Woodlands Blvd, or just say “f*ck it” to those stupid subdivisions and just go straight down Jarvis Road to Dairy Creek Road, then across and up Gardiner Road to Holmview Central. After Holmview Central, just take Logan River Road to wherever the route would travel to next - Loganlea Station maybe?
There is absolutly no reason that a 555 should be stopping at greenslopes and holland park west. yet there is always one person who uses it to fo fro these stops the brisbane cbd.
You can’t access the stop at Holmview Central from Gardiner Road. The turning circle of a bus is too great to line up with the kerb after exiting the roundabout. This is why I remarked above that it was planned absurdly poorly, like they were trying to avoid having buses at all. The only way to reach the stop is by entering the roundabout from Logan River Road, and that’s only possible from the westbound direction. Both the 567 and 563 do this because they have no real alternative.
That is extremely annoying, but still not insurmountable with some clever routing.
As it is, ex-Beenleigh I would service Holmview Central first, then incorporate part of the 567 loop by going down Gardiner Road > Ridgevale Blvd > Tallagandra Road > Teys Road, then right onto Logan River Road, up Castile Cresent, across to the Bethania shopping precinct and up High Road.
For the reverse you would do the reverse to start with (High Road > Bethania Shops > Castile Cresent), but then right onto Logan River Road, up to Holmview Central, then the same directional loop of Gardiner Road > Ridgevale Blvd > Tallagandra Road > Teys Road, then right towards Beenleigh.
That said, the approved plans for the expansion of Holmview Central might help matters a bit - they do include a new indented bus stop on Logan River Road to better service the planned second supermarket (only on the one side though so it doesn’t solve all the issues), but also incorporates a new ring road behind the complex and a new exit onto Logan River Road left of Kingdom Hope Church that will allows both a Left & Right turn. If the buses can be routed along this ring road, you could potentially skip the scenic trip down Ridgevale Blvd & Tallagandra Road.
I think any busway in Browns plains area should ultimately branch off from Eight Miles plains and follow the Gateway to Browns Plains. Then have another busway segment added to connect around to Richlands train station.
And eventually have a busway run to Carindale and via the Gateway Bridge across to Hamilton then potentially a spur to the airport and also takeover the Doomben line alignment, short bus tunnel from Eagle Junction to Kedron Brook (this will be challenging due to Airport link though), then use the bus lanes on Gympie Road to Chermside (and when the Gympie Road tunnel gets built, add a busway tunnel to that via Chermside and then Aspley through to Bracken Ridge area. Then make it a metro version of the great circle route. It will be costly but I suggest the first stage we work on is the Eight Miles Plains to Browns Plains part which would include an Interchange at an upgraded Kuraby station delivered as part of Logan to Gold Coast Fast rail project.
If I understand correctly, the new trips this allows without transfers are:
Edens Landing to/from Fletcher Road
Edens Landing to/from Holmview Central, albeit coming back a bit indirectly
Ridgevale/Tallagandra to/from Fletcher Road
And the trips that this duplicates from other routes are:
Edens Landing to/from Beenleigh (562 and railway)
Ridgevale/Tallagandra to/from Beenleigh (567)
Ridgevale/Tallagandra from Holmview Central (567, this is quicker but only allows a one-way journey)
Holmview Central to/from Beenleigh (567)
There’s quite a lot of duplication. That isn’t always a negative, but it does raise the question whether all the new trips enabled are worth all the duplication.
I feel with a good bus route, you can look at it and understand what the main purpose of it is. If it’s trying to do too much, it ends up meandering too much and becoming inconvenient. Also, it’s useful if routes have an anchor destination at each end.
In this case, what is the main purpose of this route? If the answer is facilitating connections between Edens Landing, Holmview Central and Fletcher Road, this doesn’t require the use of Ridgevale and Tallagandra. A bus can leave the Holmview Central stop, turn right into Gardiner Road, right into Logan River Road and left into Castile Crescent, which should be much quicker to do than the half 567 loop.
But if adding local connections for Edens Landing is indeed the main purpose, then I think there’s some more potential here. Because the 562 runs mostly via Castile Crescent, the half of the suburb running along Overland Drive has no nearby bus. It’s a pretty challenging area to run a bus in, as it’s very steep and doesn’t have much in the way of footpaths, but as I’ve discussed earlier, the whole stretch from Bethania to Holmview is an ode to car-centric development.
I’d consider a service catering almost exclusively to Edens Landing, covering both Castile and Overland, with ends anchored at the two major destinations in the area: Holmview Central and Edens Landing station. If it’s serving those facilities then I think there’s not much extra value in sending the bus to and from Beenleigh, when the 562, 567 and the train can all provide connections there.
I’m unsure whether there’s room for bus stops both ways along Overland, or anywhere along Fletcher (the only current stop in the area being at the western end of Glasson Drive, not exactly convenient to walk to the shops from), but let’s assume that’s all possible for the moment. And let’s assume they build a bus stop at the station, of course.
The stop on Loane Drive serving the retirement home could also be added in too perhaps. Or the bus could hit the station twice for a quick connection to/from Holmview Central.
