Concept: Western Busway Thread

Queensland Greater Brisbane
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Concept Only Disclaimer
The following concept is for forum discussion and exploration purposes only.
It is not expected to be funded or built as a priority anytime soon.

Western Busway Concept

There have been some concepts for rapid transit in Brisbane’s Western Suburbs. For example, a busway over the Brisbane river to connect the Centenary Suburbs to Indooroopilly.

Another related concept is rapid transit to UQ St Lucia, however mostly only a rail-based metro or mini-metro (e.g. Vancouver style skytrain) system has been discussed.

St Lucia Busway Extension as Rapid Transit

Simply extending the existing busway has not really been looked at. To explore this concept, the below map was drawn.

(Click image to enlarge)

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Length: ~ 5 km (Priority A, Tunnel)
Time: About 10-15 minutes from UQ Lakes to a new Indooroopilly train station (with straight platforms and bus interchange)
Stations: Four new stations (not including a new Chancellors Place busway station). These are St Lucia Shops, Ironside, Taringa and Indooroopilly.
Cost Estimate: 300 million/km x 5 km = ~ $1.5bn (estimate) (does not include new Indooroopilly train station + interchange).

Comments: Could use a mix of ordinary buses and Brisbane Metro BRT buses. Less strict engineering requirements than rail, no need for long testing periods, OHLE or electrical substations, new metro train depot. Scope for TOD around stations.

Buses can flow into existing roads and busway network without interchange (e.g. one continuous service from Carindale <> PA Hospital <> UQ <> Indooroopilly.) Medium peak capacity (3000 - 5000 pphd) based on services every 2-3 minutes.

Potential scope for future conversion to LRT, if future capacity increase is required. This would require longer platforms to be built for each busway station ($). Could connect to a future Western Busway Indooroopilly <> Centenary Suburbs.

Peak Hour Capacity Check

Q: Is there likely to be sufficient peak hour capacity?

  • Test values: Assume annual passenger volume of Ferny Grove Train Line (~ 6 million trips/year) and double this (12 million/year).
  • Back calculate test peak volume using the Pie Estimation Method

For 6 million trips/year: 6 million / 52 weeks / 5 days => 23,076 trips per day
One-way Peak is 10% of this: 23,076 x 0.1 => 2,307 pphd (about 15 Brisbane Metro BRT buses/hr or one every 4 minutes)

For 12 million trips/year: 12 million / 52 weeks / 5 days => 46,153 trips per day
One-way Peak is 10% of this: 46,153 x 0.1 => 4,615 pphd (about 30 Brisbane Metro BRT buses/hr or one every 2 minutes).

Conclusion: Test estimate falls within a reasonable range for Brisbane Metro BRT.

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Absolutely no way this would be $300m per kilometre. I would estimate $1bn per km at least

  • CRR is a slightly longer tunnel and was $6bn
  • a busway tunnel is physically larger and requires more associated infrastructure (ie. Ventilation)
  • The stations are the most expensive part. You’re talking about 3-4 new completely underground busway stations that will likely need to be in mined caverns, in an area of Brisbane with super expensive land. Not to mention the flooding issues with a tunnel entrance at UQ lakes

Revise your costs

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^^Does the design above capture the schools such as Indooroopilly High and St Peters. These two schools create traffic issues each day.

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There’s no real easy solution to this one except having no tunnel entrance at the UQ Lakes station site.

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I looked at the flood levels on a previous thread about a tunnel portal near UQ Lakes:

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I think the cost is way too prohibitive for a project like that. I think running buses along Sir Fred Schonell Drive and connecting at Toowong would be much cheaper and also a shorter distance. The main issues would be bus connections with rail at Toowong and also buses getting from one side of UQ to the other, but neither of those issues are insurmountable by any means.

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Given how expensive proper busways (read, not transitways) are, and the demand UQ generates, I would prefer UQ Indooroopilly be a rail-based solution, preferably on the inner city metro. But with the low density, high land value, and topography, I also think it should have no intermediate stops between UQ and Indro.

I also wouldn’t want to see a busway built if it means we can’t get the rail solution.

I do like the Cross Campus Tunnel idea, building a decent interchange at Chancellor’s Place and facilitating cross town travel over the Eleanor Schonell Bridge. But I think it needs to be a shallow level tunnel generally under the roads / pathways, to avoid needing deep level tunnels and significant gradients down from UQ Lakes.

My idea is for an underground tunnel that links Sir Fred Schonell to UQ Lakes, see below.

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Alternatively, if there was a real preference to head towards Hawken Drive, I would build it this way.

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The downside to this is that it needs a few parcels on Hawken/Dell/Carmody, as well as losing the Chancellory and Admin Buildings to facilitate the curve into the station and the station itself.

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Thanks for the feedback. Some responses below.

The $1bn/km value is what Sydney Metro costs per km. That includes substations, long platforms, OHLE and platform screen doors, which this won’t have.

I’m open to a side by side cost/benefit comparison if the Queensland Government thinks either mode might be viable.

Nobody will be residing in the tunnel, so it can just be closed during a flood event. Any water that gets in can be pumped out.

I think it would be cheaper too. But you’d get that bus route connection anyway once the UQ Green Tunnel / Cross Campus link was built. This would be after that stage was completed.

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I’m not so sure flooding is the barrier it once was either, as there are now engineering solutions for this.

Here is an example from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This road tunnel carries a motorway.

During the annual monsoon event, a flood event triggers the motorway to be closed and the tunnel acts as a flood diversion tunnel.

Once the flood is over, the tunnel is cleaned and water pumped out. Apparently this takes 48 hours to complete.

The tunnel has been closed and flooded multiple times, as intended.

Kuala Lumpur SMART Tunnel

Flood closure procedure

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Four stations in five kilometres is excessive, and that’s before including Chancellors Place. It’s about 3.5km as the crow flies from Indro station to Chancellors Place. One intermediate station in that distance is sufficient, either Taringa or Ironside. This should also enable the tunnel to be a little shorter. The rest can be reached relatively easily using surface level buses as they’re pretty much all on the same continuous road except Indro.

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Remember that any new buses going forward have to be zero emissions. By the time anyone would finish constructing a tunnel like this, I would imagine there would be enough ZEBs available in the TfB fleet to restrict the tunnel to ZEBs only, negating the need for extra ventilation.

Not sure I’d call St Lucia low density, there are plenty of apartment buildings and townhouses along Swann Rd. There’s a case for an intermediate stop somewhere along the way to help service that density, at least if it were busway.

I think it’s certainly possible to have a rail link along the lines of green team’s proposal for the Brisbane Subway alignment. There’s little point having a stub or trying to duplicate the Eleanor Schonell Bridge.

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But this would be expensive as hell and subject to political wrangling. Any party that signed off on this would likely be accused of only being concerned with the inner city while short-changing the outer suburbs. At least the busway tunnel can be sold as enabling a future extension along the Western Freeway to get a busway to the Centenary area.

Perceptions like that do matter to politicians. The Victorian government is currently getting savaged for (among other things) embarking on a big expensive rail tunnel instead of upgrading the lines to the fastest-growing areas in the outer suburbs. Never forget that politics often gets in the way of what is possible.

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Hilly Terrain

Well, it may seem so at first, however the area is very hilly which reduces the walk-up radius around stations. So there is a need for more stations just to get decent coverage as the terrain is not flat.

The stations are indicative, so the locations can of course be changed, added to or subtracted as needed. It is a concept. Having 5 km / 5 stations (including Chancellors Pl) = 1000 m apart on average. That’s similar to what one would expect for LRT. Some of our QR train stations are closer than this value.

Stopping Patterns & Capacity

Another observation is that buses do not have to stop at all stations, if desired. For example, BUZ routes 150 and 130 omit Buranda station and other stops on the SE busway. The same principle can be applied here as well. That said, the estimated time (10-15 min) from UQ Chancellors Place to a new Indooroopilly station is short, skipping stations would not result in a significant time saving benefit.

Unlike a railway where mixing all stop and express patterns reduces line capacity, this isn’t a problem with this busway.

Brisbane inner city rail-based metros are non-serious proposals

Agree. That green metro line in the image posted is about 14 km long. Based on 1 billion/km (Sydney Metro), that would come in at about $14b. Or about 3x the cost of an East-West busway or metro connection from Indooroopilly <> St Lucia <> UQ.

These sort of Paris-style metro proposals tend to be included in planning documents for their talking point value. The public looks favourably on these ideas. But they do not seem serious or viable proposals. No progress on this inner city metro concept appears to have been made since its inclusion in the Connecting SEQ2032 Plan (released 2011).

Some “green tunnels” or green bridges for buses under or over the Brisbane River at Bulimba-Newstead, West End - St Lucia, and Bellbowrie-Riverhills could potentially achieve similar connectivity of the green metro line much faster minus the price tag. Inner city LRT could also be another alternative.

A rail-based metro mode is better suited to very high volume tasks. Such as replacing the SEB (which carries the equivalent of a metro already - 40 million trips/year), perhaps a corridor parallel to it, or CBD-Chermside.

Sydney Metro and Melbourne SRL are not “Paris Style”

It is worth noting that Sydney Metro and Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) are both primarily aimed at outer suburb line haul transport. They are not inner city “Paris Style” metro services like the the green metro line is.

Melbourne has so many rail lines and stations. A good starting point is doing whatever is necessary to allow 10 min trains on virtually all suburban lines.

It’s been easy to jump from those desires to the notion that since Australia doesn’t have metros now, it needs to build them. But Bowen’s work in Melbourne (and our own work on the Sydney Morning Herald inquiry) are pointing out that our cities already have a network of grade-separated rail lines covering the areas of European density, and that the quickest way to get a “metro” level of mobility is simply to run these lines much more frequently.

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I would estimate you could add around 30% to that cost, due to the far more challenging geotechnical features of Brisbane’s bedrock. Sydney sandstone is relatively soft. Brisbane Tuff requires special tungsten carbide cutting heads for TBMs, which are considerably more expensive, and require more frequent replacement.

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Again, they are all along the same surface road except for Indro station. There are multiple bus routes that connect them up via surface roads already.

Yes, and I am critiquing that concept and explaining what I think could be improved to make a stronger concept.

This isn’t surface LRT, it’s a tunnel. As has been explained by others, underground stations are the most expensive part of a tunnel,so it makes sense to be judicious with them to avoid the costs spiralling.

I’d also say that QR train stations being closer than that is an argument to rationalise a few of them, not to copy that example. In an area with the density of the CBD or even Milton or Toowong, that’s a reasonable distance, not necessarily here.

I agree, it wouldn’t. I’d also say that it may be reasonable to plan skipping surface stations that weren’t expensive to build and maintain, but not so much for underground stations built post-Covid. They’re so expensive that building them with the plan of many services bypassing them is poor value for money.

I agree, better to concentrate on the smaller wins that are achievable until the demand for better inner city public transport becomes overwhelming. It’s notable that Sydney dominates its state population in a way Brisbane doesn’t, and that makes a difference when it comes to politicians deciding where they’re going to spend money to win as many competitive electorates as possible.

Very true, and this helped get them built.

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Trying to re-sell the BaT tunnel as a BaF (Bus and Floodwater) tunnel will be mission impossible.

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Well, its good to know that the barrier is more perception rather than engineering. Perceptions can be changed.

Its worth noting that the Albert Street CRR tunnel is below flood level. It has flood gates installed. Something similar could be applied to a busway tunnel under UQ. A rail-based metro in the same area would face similar issues. If the CRR engineers can solve it for CRR, I’m sure it can be solved for a bus tunnel as well.

It may have been submerged in the January floods, but the state government insists there is no need to change the design of the Albert Street entrance for Brisbane’s planned underground rail system.

Despite being on the same surface road, there still remains a need to address adequate walk-up coverage to the stations. A one or two stop concept would have major gaps. It would not be good value for money to build a busway with 1 or 2 stops that passengers would have difficulty accessing. For example, it is desirable to have access to Indooroopilly High school in the area.

It would be a weaker concept without the additional stations IMO, and locals would rightly question why so few stations were being built and the difficult hilly walk. It would also be less opportunity for TOD.

For example, the distance between Buranda busway and Stones Corner Busway is about 500m, and about 500m between Stones Corner busway and Langlands Park. The distance between PA Hospital and Boggo Road is about 600m.

The busway stop spacing being proposed here for St Lucia is about twice this.

While it is possible to run buses on the surface, once the expense of a bus tunnel is incurred, it would make sense to run as many routes as possible through it.

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It feels like you’re very focused on having many stations for more walk-up catchment. We have a model for this setup already in Brisbane, that we can see decades worth of results of: our train lines.

How’s that performing? Not great, I’d say. The amount of density uplift around almost all stations outside the inner city has been underwhelming, limiting the size of the walk-up catchment. Eagle Junction gets most northside trains but it’s still surrounded by detached houses. And the sheer number of stations slows down a lot of all stops trains, to the point where people will often ignore their local station in favour of driving to an express station.

I prefer having relatively few stations with frequent feeder buses into each one. Not everyone would need to walk to a station if there were frequent buses along Swann Rd, Lambert Rd, Gailey Rd, etc.

I disagree, poor value for money would be putting in large numbers of stations, slowing down the journey for everyone coming from further out, and duplicating existing infrastructure instead of making good use of what we already have.

If we’re spending billions of dollars, the problems we are trying to solve should be very clearly defined, and I don’t think local access to public transport within St Lucia ranks high on that list. Even if it were, it’s not that hard to improve with frequent surface road buses.

This is what school buses are for.

If it’s a difficult hilly walk, why would anyone want to build a TOD there? Why not on flatter ground? One station in the middle of St Lucia is an improvement on what the locals have now. And I’d suggest that many of the locals who are not uni students are such NIMBYs that they’d gladly accept fewer stations in their suburb if it meant fewer high-density developments near them.

Those stations serve different and specific purposes. Buranda and Boggo Road are there to connect with railway stations, Stones Corner is there to service a specific retail and residential area, and PA Hospital’s purpose is in its name (and I’d argue it only exists because many people who use hospitals have mobility issues and can’t walk from elsewhere. After all, that’s what saved Dutton Park station).

The proposed stations for St Lucia are all about serving neighbouring residential areas. I repeat, this can be done easily with one station and frequent connecting buses.

You’re again ignoring the cost of building stations. And the failure to feed services into busway stations using public roads is a big reason why we ended up getting severe congestion on the Victoria Bridge, necessitating higher capacity buses, the new network and greater use of the Captain Cook Bridge. A similar thing could happen with the Eleanor Schonell Bridge one day if we repeat the same mistakes.

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Agreed. The hurdles and cost are too prohibitive on this occasion, especially when there are so many needs. A frequent surface bus option would be adequate.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Having the station gives you the option of TOD. No station rules it out entirely.

St Lucia, Taringa, Indooroopilly are very much student suburbs. Student accomodation TODs such as those at South Bank or Buranda are a good possibility and could potentially offset the cost of a station if costs were a concern.

Well, why should local residents be required to first catch a local feeder bus to catch another bus over such a short distance? How does that benefit them?

Feeder buses on surface roads suggests buses limited by general road speed limits and mixed traffic/congestion slowing journeys down.

Politically, more stations are also easier to sell. You don’t need to catch a feeder bus and then transfer, you just walk to the station. And in terms of station spacing, I’ve presented information that demonstrates many newer busway stations with spacing closer to 500-600m. This spacing proposed here is double that.

There is no rapid transit corridor through St Lucia to Indooroopilly. So it isn’t duplicating existing infrastructure.

Journeys would be faster and more reliable than today. Busways can and do have separate speed limits set higher than general surface roads. On the SEB it is 90 km/hr. Surface roads through Hawken village are 40 km/hr and on Hawken Drive its 50 km/hr.

Each additional station would only add say ~ 45 seconds to a trip for dwell. Its not that much slower.

Citywide Cross-Town Connectivity

So this concept is really about a vision of cross-town connectivity for Brisbane. It’s more than just “local access to public transport within St Lucia”.

Carindale Shopping Centre <> PA Hospital <> Boggo Road <> UQ Lakes <> UQ Chancellors Place <> Indoorooplly

Someone living at Indooroopilly could take Bus 209 from Indooroopilly catch it under UQ and go to work at PA Hospital, for example. A retail worker living at Carindale could catch the bus to a job at Indooropilly. Here, PT would be the preferred mode because the competing trip in a car would be very indirect.

Surface Bus Frequency

Absolutely the bus routes 411/427/428/432 could be improved. That should of course be a first step. This concept simply suggests that is should not be the last step.

How can we offset the cost of additional stations? Could they be offset with student accomodation TODs. There are such TODs already at Buranda, South Bank and Toowong.

And its a lot cheaper and achievable than a $14b green-line metro that members have discussed here. Possibly 3x cheaper. With the savings we could potentially build rapid transit out to Centenary as well.

If we are prepared to support a $14b proposal, then I think it is reasonable to explore the concept of a Priority A busway serving a similar area that costs much less than that as part of exploring the initial solution space to the problem of cross-town and cross-river connectivity in Brisbane.

A disclaimer does appear at the beginning of this thread marking it as a concept.

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As some of the postings are a bit long, I’m going provide an easier to read table.

Consideration Explanation
Improving surface buses will be cheaper It would be cheaper. However, if we are prepared to consider a $14b rail based green line metro serving this area, then its only fair to consider other Priority A corridor alternatives to service the same transit demand.
Too many stations spaced too closely Spacing is similar to exisiting busway station spacing. Buranda-Langlands Park, Roma St-Normanby, Herston-RBWH are all around ~ 500-800 m spacing. Locations are indicative only.
Busway stations are costly, so its desirable to have fewer of them Cost is one consideration. Another is accessibility and walk-up coverage in a hilly environment. Busway platforms are generally shorter than those on the QR network (~ 150 m) and Sydney Metro (~160 m) and thus likely to be cheaper to construct than a rail alternative. Potential to offset cost via student accomodation TODs.
Too many stations will slow down buses Busway speed limits are generally set higher than surface roads (90 km/hr on SEB) versus 50 km/hr on Hawken Drive and 40km/hr through Hawken village. Each stop only adds about 45 seconds to a trip. Option to run non-stop UQ-Indooroopilly express bus service pattern in addition to an all-stops service if desired.
Busway won’t have enough capacity for the demand Busway could handle around 5000 pphd running Brisbane Metro BRT every 2 minutes in peak. Scope to handle ~ 12 million passengers/year, similar to GCLRT (10 million pax/year).
Busway would only service local St Lucia trips Busway would make possible a single-seat journey from Carindale to Indooroopilly without going via the Brisbane CBD. PT would be the first choice, as a competing car trip would be very indirect. Easier access to PA Hospital for those living in Brisbane’s west
Flooding Tunnel can be designed to be floodable similar to existing tunnel designs or have flood gating installed to seal it.
Busway would cost 1 billion/km Brisbane’s Northern Link tunnel, a twin tunnel, four lane (total) road bored through Brisbane Tuff rock cost $1.5 billion in 2011 dollars. Using the RBA inflation calculator this is about $2.1 billion in 2024 dollars. Dividing this by 4.6 km tunnel length gives 456 million/km. Suggests costs would be much less than $1b/km.
Not a priority This is a concept discussion thread and it is marked as such

Notes

Legacy Way tunnel costs