Not true at all! Four lanes of general traffic plus 2 bus lanes is absolutely achievable.
Much of the corridor is 6-7 lanes already, and the rest could be expanded with fairly minimal disruption. BCC has a long-term plan to “6-lane” the whole stretch from Gabba to Moorooka anyway, and for many years they’ve required all DAs fronting the road to hand over some land as a “dedication” to expand the road reserve, generally on the western side of the road.
Like the issue with Mains Road Sunnybank, you wouldn’t be able to have a fully segregated bus lanes running on the outside of the Ipswich Road, as access to existing sidestreets and carparks needs to be maintained.
I guess another question to be asked is where these bus lanes need to extend from and to. At the Stanley Street end, would we put the lanes in straight from Stanley Street, or would be we start off going via Jurgens Street? Also, is it viable to take 2 bus lanes out of the 4 lane section of Ipswich Road near the Norman Hotel and where it goes under the Highway?
Much of it is six lanes, or is four plus turning lanes, or has very wide medians, or has low value land such as car yard forecourts along the side.
An alternative is to do four traffic lanes plus two bus lanes where possible, then revert to four lanes at intersections where necessary, but with bus priority traffic light priority to let them jump the queue.
Lots of ways to do it if you accept the premise that a bus with forty or fifty people on it should get priority over a car with one or two.
You absolutely do not need to provide access to every side street. Most of them would do well to turn into cul-de-sacs with access at the other end. As these are old suburbs they are mostly some roughly grid layout with streets from Ipswich Road leading to another road at the other end.
left turn movements can still be accommodated in bus lanes, as on Gympie Rd, Old Cleveland Rd. On-street parking obviously should be removed (i.e. at the Annerley high street).
I’d like to see 24-hour bus lanes from Stanley St to Moorooka train station - that allows the 100 and the 125 to have a clear run through the worst of the congestion.
The beauty of bus lanes is you get benefit however long or short they are, so you can just put them in for as much distance as you can. And you can give them priority at lights when they need to rejoin general traffic.
Yes definitely. One example is Chester St, Annerley. At minimum it should be left-in/left-out only, meaning a whole lane of Ipswich Rd can be reallocated to a bus lanes (i.e. the existing northbound right-turn lane).
Yes, that can be accommodated in a bus lane, but not if it is a fully segregated bus lane (no general traffic access at all). That’s my point - it would have to be the former rather than the latter.
This is what you would have to go between Broadway Street and Reis Street beneath the Highway - the roadway there is 4 lanes with no easy way to expand it. As it is, northbound traffic goes through a tunnel with no shoulders, as the area is so constrained.
I would note that Chester Road looks to host the main drop off area and carpark for Our Lady’s College, so I think you would want to at least retain left in, left out access to it.
Removing right turn access to both it and Ferndale Street seems reasonable though - both are accessible from Waterton Street & Cracknell Road respectively.
I don’t believe that is the case. The section where it passes under the M3, for example, is quite constrained.
Yes, that section may not accomodate bus lanes, but as @OzGamer has said, buses can simply get priority at the lights on either side, and then bus lanes can resume either side. The outbound side is marginally better here (since the long sloping batters should accomodate an extra lane, similar to the V1 section at O’Keefe St overpass) – but even outbound there is a narrow point directly outside the Norman Hotel.
Every meter of bus lanes gives a benefit, and almost the whole of the remainder of the corridor is plenty wide enough.
Relevantly from the BCC Budget 2025-26. They’re working on something now, but I am willing to bet it will be half-arsed.
Moorooka shouldn’t be too hard. Plenty of room to have bus lanes and maintain two general traffic lanes through there. Maybe even put in some proper bike lanes, as well.
Mains Rd/Beaudesert Rd could easily host a median BRT corridor with minimal space constraints. Ipswich Rd could also host one from the PA to the motorway.
Is median running really workable on bus corridors that feature stops every few 100 metres apart?
That’s the thing: it’s simply unsustainable to have stops every 100mts. For a BRT corridor to be effective you need to have stops with distances more akin to a BUZ.
A corridor like Mains or Ipswich Rd (hell, even Logan Rd) doesn’t need that many stops so close together, and you could say that for Brisbane in general.
I said every few hundred metres apart, not strickly every hundred metres. Mains Road for example seems to sit between 250-600m, and these are the distances of a BUZ (130 & 140). I think this distance represents appropriate spacing along this corridor, but I still think it’s too close to be workable for a median bus corridor.
Well, that’s the trade off in essence, coverage vs speed. I think on major roads people will accept fewer stops for a quicker service, especially if there’s some level of bus segregation from regular traffic. Whereas on side streets where segregation is simply not possible, people are less willing to walk further to stops.
In some places where the local population might start rioting if a general traffic lane is given over to buses, I’ve wondered if an elevated busway above the road might be an idea. Obviously that’s incompatible with the idea of a bus stop every few hundred metres, but I will note that there are places where busways run alongside regular roads that feature regular stops short distances apart, such as the Northern Busway between Truro Street and Kedron Brook.
