About the only thing we can look forward to is that CRR will be completed, and Gold Coast Logan Faster Rail project looks like it is still proceeding at this stage. Everything else seems to be turning to cactus…
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But we’ll have lots more freeway lanes and bypasses of freeways!! They are untouchable!
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According to reports over at the Reddit subforums for BrisbaneTrains, one of the QR crew that posted on that forum had reported that NGRs has been cleared for services north of Nambour to Gympie North.
However the NGRs won’t be operating regularly to Gympie North for the foreseeable, but more on a ad-hoc / fill-in basis when-ever a IMU100/120 or a 160/260 is not available.
Edit: Same poster also stated that NGRs are not permitted to stow overnight at Gympie North, and I’m assuming they won’t be going to be stowed at Woombye, so that reduces options to the “daytime” GympieLander on Weekdays, the Saturday evening or Sunday Morning Gympielander services.
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Looks like the LNP plan is to have heavy rail to Birtinya, then a Brisbane style “Metro” (bi-articulated buses) from Birtinya to Marrochydoore and on to the Sunshine Coast Airport.
Allegedly by 2032 for the Olympics.
I’m not sure what this means for the “heavy rail to Maroochydoore by 2032” promise, but given they lied about ‘No new stadiums’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a lie too.
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^^ I think they simply realised that they couldn’t deliver rail to Maroochydore in time.
Better than nothing!
I recall SunCoast do.plan 2 hi capcity PT corridors between maroochy & Caloundra with one HR and other Metro
Pleased to see that DSCL will still exist in some form by 2032, but deeply disappointed to see the last stage between Birtinya and Maroochydore has been cancelled. Obviously their promise to deliver it by 2032 was always completely unachievable but it would have still been nice for them to commit to finishing it eventually.
My initial opinion is that ‘The Wave’ (which appears to be a clone of Brisbane Metro) is probably the third best solution (Light Rail being the second), but ultimately I’m concerned that it will be an expensive band aid that may discourage future governments from finishing DSCL in its entirety. One of the biggest selling points of the DSCL was to allow fast, regular and convenient single seat travel between Maroochydore and Brisbane, with feeder buses connecting to the major interchanges to make it a 2-seat journey at worst. It seems like we won’t be getting the ‘fast’ or ‘convenient’ aspects in the forseeable future.
The optimist in me thinks that perhaps there’s still a chance for the eventual extension to Maroochydore post-olympics, however that rests on one thing: The corridor remaining preserved, and the government ignoring calls from local developers to sell it off.
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I’m prepared to “ride the wave”…hopefully - one day - we’ll see heavy rail all the way, but even I have to accept, the clock was always against it, so far as the 2032 Games are concerned…to those disappointed, keep in mind, looking to rail in the longer-term does open the door to bigger/bolder dreams, the trick is to frame them, in a way a future govt will get behind…so DON’T give up!
bit unfair, he did explain, the problem with “existing”, which I also conceptually support, ie, no NEW stadiums, is that we’d be pouring BILLION$ into 40yr old infrastructure and saying to the world…“WOW, that’s us”! Maybe before ex-Madam Premier signed us all up to this glorified sports carnival, she could have floated a few ideas with people…it was her slogan to have the “affordable games”…but where???
Make sense to have a short-term bus to mimic/fill-in until the rail line goes the way to Airport and beyond. Not end-state. Light-rail not needed as not end-state.
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Unless if there’s bus priority lanes on Kawana Way and Nicklin Way, the (Metro)WaveBus is going to face the same traffic problems the HF600/ 611 do now during peak hours. Especially when the 600 may “bunch up” during peak hours (generally during school pick up hours) due to traffic congestion on said roads.
It does make sense short term, howhever my concern is that future governments will see the ‘bendy bus’ solution as a ‘good enough’ solution which will eliminate any urgency to actually finish the line to Maroochydore post-2032.
I know I might be overly cynical but this project has been promised for decades with zero progress so I’m not exactly convinced that there’ll be a rush to spend billions on the last section.
Indeed, as a somewhat irregular 600 user I can attest to the fact that anything short of seperated bus lanes will be no better than driving especially on Nicklin Way. The render of the wave vehicles sees to suggest some degree of traffic separation perhaps through the Mooloolah River Interchange (maybe a ‘busway’ bridge) but details are so limited right now that I’d take it with a grain of salt.
Reading through the actual 100 day review document this evening I noticed something interesting
Anyone know anything about the modelling they’ve used to achieve this number? If they’re suggesting 126,000 passengers daily between Beerwah and Maroochydore that would mean ‘the wave’ metro would need to achieve higher frequency than Brisbane Metro, no? Surely that’s overestimated.
A 1-hour peak value can be approximated by taking a slice of the daily trip pie.
A reasonable figure is Peak = 10% of the daily trip figure.
So the peak demand would be about 12,600 pphd
This is similar to what the SEB does.
This is about 12 trains per hour (a train every 5 minutes in peak) assuming that one train carries about 1000 pax.
Buses feeding into train stations will be essential as a walk-up only catchment is not going to generate the demand.
During the Comm Games trains were every 10 minutes. They could also utilise 9 car sets, with 2 Wave Vehicles connecting every 3-5 mins at Birtinya.
Can the “Wave” be an O-Bahn?
One aspect of all this that I am not so keen on is the creation of more brands, logos and symbols that will be added to the massive pile of brandclutter that we already have on the PT network.
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I don’t even think the government know what ‘The Wave’ brand will be.
It sounds like ‘the wave’ is the BRT vehicles - but why did they release a mock up of an NGR that has the same decal on it? Is the wave also the DSCL? Will some of QR’s fleet be branded in blue to promote it? If so, how will they avoid ‘the wave’ NGRs running on other lines confusing people?
It seems like the vision is that it’ll be the Sunshine Coast’s version of The G:Link but… why? The new brand doesn’t exist yet and I already feel it’s due for an identity crisis.
Also… where does this leave the Sunshine Coast Mass Transit which was also supposed to be a BRT system. Is SCMT dead in the water, replaced by future expansions of the wave? Or will we have the wave and SCMT as two seperate networks running alongside each other?
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That would have been the local Council’s in collaboration with TMR idea to help market the product locally