I reckon you could possibly go an Adelaide St style horizontal dig if you stayed under the streets / walkways. But it would be 3 times the length as Adelaide Street so the Cost Benefit is going to be sketchy, and that’s before any platforms at Chancellors Place.
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It’s really a matter for the engineers to solve, which they will. Different options can also go forward in a study between surface and tunnel opens.
It’s UQ controlled land, so they’re unlikely to agree to ~ 100 bus movements per hour on internal surface roads. But you can still put the option forward. UQ restricts bike moments on campus in favour of pedestrians, so it’s likely the same logic will apply to buses too.
A decision will also need to be made on whether to include a bike tunnel component like Zurich has.
More broaderly UQ should be made to show how it’s reducing car use to as low as possible to minimize the costs being socialized on the surrounding roads.
Cross-campus public transport obstruction should be publically outed! Not a team player
UQs objection is likely not due to an ignorance of how transport efficiency works, but due to their own pomposity. Rather than being shown the benefits, they need to be shown who’s boss by the government. Until that happens, I expect UQs leadership to remain unhelpful.
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Thus need to embarrass them as making Brisbane’s congestion worse and not being a team player in its City.
You also have to remember that UQ has a very unstable relationship with the community to its west. The St Lucia Community Association were very vocal about UQ being too big for their community (the one that was developed after the Uni was, but whatever) the last time UQ tried to update its MID approval. This included being against the additional pedestrian and bicycle bridges to West End and Yeronga because it would encourage more people to cycle through their community.
UQ isn’t going to just turn around and say “good idea, we support you” if its going to stir up drama with its neighbours. And I think you’ll find more buses in St Lucia will stir up the neighbours, particularly down Hawken / Swan because they’ll see buses as causing traffic (not fixing it).
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and Brisbane collectively pays the price…call them both out.
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So, the University of Queensland is governed under an Act of (State) Parliament. What’s to stop the Government from modifying that act to give themselves permission to build a bus road/busway across the campus?
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These NIMBYs also need to be told where to go.
Buses cause traffic! 
Roads were built to be used.
Is it UQ or people at St Lucia that are likely to complain about more buses along Hawkens/Swan?
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Because taxing students to use their carparks is not enough so they decide to ‘socially engineer’ the obstruction to hide their xenophobia of people accessing St Lucia.
Technical or infrastructure engineering is arguably only half the project.
The other half is the people side: Listening, community acceptance, stakeholder management, consultation, impact mitigation and negotiation.
People live there. UQ is also sensitive to having any sort of vehicle stream cutting across the surface of the campus (whether that be bikes, thorough-traffic cars, or buses). Having 50-100 bus movements per hour on the surface is going to be medium to high impact.
And the Queensland Government generally doesn’t like to undertake a project unless there is at least one other partner, and preferably multiple stakeholders, on board.
At minimum, for this project to launch, UQ, BCC and TMR would all have to be on the same page and in agreement.
UQ as an entity does not speak for or represent the students and employees of UQ. That is three different stakeholders there.
I’d put more weight on the students, then the institution itself.
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The State can vary whatever legislation is in place that governs UQ or resume any UQ land needed for whatever would be implemented here because it is clearly for a public purpose. To the extent compensation must be paid, that can just be an argument for later on and does not hold up the resumption taking effect. There isn’t a damn thing UQ can do about any of this. At best their rights should be to be meaningfully consulted about a project like this, and even then that does not mean they need UQ’s imprimatur. There’s only a handful of places in the State where it doesn’t have this degree of control, basically anywhere the Commonwealth runs the show.
I’m not sufficiently across the arrangements to know if UQ is entitled to compensation if part of their land was taken, but that is probably the main concern, assuming the engineering works at a non-eyewatering figure.
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This conversation reminds me of often seeing yellow signs with ‘No Busway’ or ‘No more buses’, typical NIMBY signs or something to that effect throughout Hawkin Drive (been a few years since I travelled along Hawkin Drive).
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These are typically the same people who want extra lanes on their roads and people loosing their homes for that is just progress!
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