Maybe have the 402 become a “Metro” route, with the 209 terminating at Stones Corner or Langlands Park? [Edited to add:] Dunno what should happen with the 412 in such a scenario, though.
There are a few scenarios, so worth exploring.
For example, a metro bus could operate as a high capacity rail shuttle:
Toowong <> UQ Chancellors Place <> UQ Lakes, Boggo Rd <> PA Hospital <> Buranda <> Stones Corner
This could run every 7.5 minutes and mop up all the transferring passengers. It could run express from UQ Chancellors Place to Toowong Station.
This would allow standard buses to flow between Indooroopilly and terminate at PA Hospital or another location.
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damn your good at making these maps
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Thanks! Trying to make it easier to visualise what could be, without giving off “GrAPHiC DesIgN iS My PaSsIOn” vibes.
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What app did you use?
Inkscape.
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This scenario is attractive, and as always, the map looks great.
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Route 402 (Metro BRT) becomes a high frequency, high capacity shuttle between Toowong <> UQ Chancellors Place <> UQ Lakes <> Boggo Road <> PA Hospital <> Buranda <> Stones Corner. It will be well loaded travelling in any direction.
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Load Balancing: Much of the load on Route 412 is between Toowong Station - UQ Chancellors Place. Having a high frequency shuttle will mean more space on Route 412, which can continue to use standard buses.
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Interchanging passenger demand from Boggo Rd <> UQ lakes gets mopped up, which allows a 209 Service to proceed as a cross-town to Indooroopilly using standard buses and capacity on board.
Proof of Concept:
The high frequency Route 601 bus in Melbourne runs between Huntingdale Station <> Monash University. This route:
- Has only has 2 stops, the station and the uni.
- It uses standard buses.
- It travels on ordinary roads (in the past there was no priority, but now it has bus lanes or bus jumps)
- The frequency of service is very high - a bus runs every 3-4 minutes all day (about 15-23 buses per hour).
It achieves 22,000 passengers per weekday (Wikipedia), which translates to about ~ 5.7 million trips per year. This is similar to what a rail line in Brisbane might be moving a year.
The UQ Case
A similar concept applied at UQ could potentially be even more successful. In the UQ case, you have two rail stations (Toowong, Boggo Road), two busways (SEB, Eastern) and a large hospital precinct (PA Hospital).
We would have the benefit of a much larger vehicle (Brisbane Metro) and exclusive busway for much of the route length.
Notes
Route 601 Huntingdale Station - Monash Uni
Timetable excerpt showing buses every 2-4 minutes
Route 601 Timetable
https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/route/timetable/12750/601-huntingdale-monash-university/
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Came across some more interesting background research:
“We have traffic modelling for [consultancy] MRCagney that indicates that if we had the opportunity for buses to ‘go through’ the university – and in this case, we would want it to go under UQ – you would reduce traffic on the St Lucia road network by 20 per cent,” he said.
More than 3.1 million bus trips are made to UQ’s two separated bus stations each year, making it the origin and destination of two of Brisbane’s busiest routes.
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It’s heartening to see someone else look at the situation and arrive more or less at the same conclusion.
Its silly that buses can’t flow East-West without the need to interchange and walk 10 min across campus.
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I rather see the main metro bus trunk route from Indooroopilly as this would service the community better as well as provide opportunity for further extension west.
Good illustration skills by the way
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Defs that tunnel should happen to enable a western link for the bus network from UQ abd CBD to Kenmore, Moggill etc while easing pressure on the Toowong-Milton corridor
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Good illustration skills by the way
Thanks! I’ve been hoping to make myself useful somehow (broadly, not just BTQ forum). For this sort of thing, main influences are a particular individual (Jug Cerovic), and a particular company (CHK America). Check out their work; you won’t be disappointed.
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If we are to believe that UQ “donated the land” for free to TMR for the UQ Lakes station & ES Bridge then why did UQ lose their shit over transformers being sited at the UQ Lakes station for the BCC’s fake-metro project?
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Because UQ are run by a herd of miserable fusspots who hate anything that interferes with their supreme sovereignty over the St Lucia peninsula. They need to be taken down a peg or two so that they stop objecting to developments that are in the public interest.
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UQ “donated” the land…that was originally donated to them [that is, the $$$ used], by someone else [ie Mayne family]! Typically academics…clueless!
UQ supports five cross-town bus routes that run at least 15 minutes or better all day.
We are easily looking at 50 buses per hour one way, if you now count return bus trips that’s say 100 bus movements per hour, or a bus going by every 36 seconds.
While it’s possible to accommodate this on the surface, UQ has a point that this is undesirable in local surface streets.
For this reason, a connecting green tunnel is worth looking into.
It’s also worth looking at through-routing many cross-town bus routes, which will save about 10 mins walk plus interchange penalty on all through-routed routes.
There are so many potential end point destinations - Centenary, Kenmore, Indooroopilly, Chapel Hill, Toowong, Mt Coot-tha.
Cross campus bus tunnel makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t have strong opinions about routing through St Lucia since there are two main corridors.
But once that connection’s there it opens up all those options we’ve been talking about forever like Carindale-UQ-Indro crosstown.
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I don’t understand why it can’t just be at grade. Tunnelling is far and away the most capital intensive option (especially for such a low capacity outcome) and I am completely unsatisfied anybody has had a decent think about how to do it without TBMs.
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