Things like the metro bus wouldn’t really compete with rail patronage if the railway services were fast and frequent, the areas the busways serve are nowhere near any rail lines so if people are taking it instead of the railways then it seems to me that’s more of an indictment of QR’s inadequacies than BCC’s disinterest in integrating bus services with heavy rail services.
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From my understanding of WA, the public transport system there basically completely broke down by the 80s which meant that they had to reform things then. The same thing happened in Auckland by the 90s. While in Brisbane the public transport provision stayed just barely adequate for the needs of the city until now where its starting to really show its inadequacies for the type of city Brisbane developed into. Reforms are urgently needed but I fear that if the state government took over public transport we may very well end up being worse off than the current situation if the state government starts running buses like trains. Remember outside of Brisbane councils have no role in public transport provision and except for the Gold Coast there PT offerings are actually more inadequate. As an example Cairns doesn’t even have a bus to the airport and people are left walking on a main road in the heat.
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I agree the frequencies on the rail network are largely woeful.
I believe with some staffing rostering changes, 15 minute frequencies could be implemented pretty much tomorrow to Manly (potentially Cleveland with some possible reliability issues), Kuraby, Springfield Central, Ferny Grove (already done but could do with it on weekends as well), Redcliffe, Shorncliffe and the Airport. I think theoretically Caboolture and Ipswich could do it too. The rollingstock is there, it’s just the drivers and guards that need rostering.
If that happened, bus services could be co-ordinated better and that would make a massive difference.
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I’ve actually figured out that QR could very much extend the Coopers Plains short runs to Kuraby right now without conflicting with express trains by using the middle track exclusively.
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Could they with the rollingstock? They’re reliant on 3-cars a lot lately to fill the network’s schedule.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the 3 car services are mostly during the peak? However, in off peak there are plenty of available units.
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3-car services in off-peak are generally sufficient anyway. The reason they largely aren’t operated is due to the time in coupling/decoupling them.
Even in peak, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Doomben train anywhere near the capacity of a 3-car unit. Maybe on race days.
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