Disruption Management (Events, Planned Closures, Track Work, etc...)

[Pionsix]

Starting a dedicated thread for discussing management of major disruptions, particularly in Brisbane.

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Last Sunday (13Apr25) the Tour de Brisbane lead to widespread busway and road closures significantly impacting the bus network.

Road Impacts:

I went out to experience the disruptions first hand and as per previous instances, the current approach to disruption management has again lead to a pretty poor experience for impacted customers. It feels like the focus is on avoiding travel (Disruption was well advertised at the stations in the lead-up and through digital channels) rather than how to actually travel during the disruption (Because everyone can just drive instead right? ). Even as someone familiar with the network and the typical disruptions, I still felt very much in the dark at the time.

I am still of the view that at a planning level, conservative reopening times should be given and each trip specifically timetabled and runprinted to alternative stops if operating within that time range and then at the operations stage, continue to service all precommunicated alternative stops even if regular operations could resume sooner. This gives customers certainty required take trips, especially around the transition period.

The below report is a mix of official service updates as well as in-person and AnyTrip observations. Unfortunately getting all the details out has made it quite the post.

My routing (go-card times shown for buses) was:

• 222/IB (C2052) Coorparoo Junction (07:36) - SC replacement - Stones Corner Library (07:39)
• Observed route 19 at PAH station
• 100/IB (W1522) Ipswich Road @ PAH (08:20) - MH replacement - Stanley St, stop 6 (08:25)
• 111/OB (G5144) MH replacement - temp stop (08:29) - 8MP replacement - Holmead St (08:58)
• At Eight Mile Plains for SEB reopening
• 169/IB (G1251) 8MP (09:33) - Boggo (09:49) (Not Disrupted)
• Train (DA21 > DK14) Boggo to Oxley via Roma St (Not Disrupted)
• 450/OB (W1457) Oxley Station (11:00) to Mt Ommaney (11:18)
• 460/OB (W1477) Mt Ommaney (11:45) to Richlands (11:56) (Partially Disrupted)
• Train (DY27) Richlands to Roma St (Not Disrupted)
• 222/OB (G1320) RS (13:00) to Coorparoo Junction (13:26)

Service Updates

TransLink released three service updates in advance of the event:

1. Busway station closures
2. Non-busway closures (CBD, Kangaroo Point, Western Freeway, Kingsford Smith Drive, West End)
3. Nightlink Impacts - essentially CBD stop changes + extending applicable day impacts so not discussed further in this post

TransLink website/Journey Planner and GTFS feed

Standard Sunday timetable was published and displaying across all digital sources which made trip planning very confusing. Live feed cut out for many of the vehicles on diversion. The only way to know what is going on is to be familiar with all routes, read all service updates and have some blind faith.

Example screenshots of unhelpful digital data

Busway Closures

Nothing too unqiue about the replacement arrangements this time but communication was still poor. There was a lot of generally important information which was hidden in a particular station’s update. In general I’m supportive of displaying information per station rather than per route but with the scale of diversions and some routes bypassing the alternative stops, the busway section should have been expanded to include some route specific information.

The high level information provided by the service update was:

• South East and Eastern Busway closed 4am - 9am
• Inner Northern Busway stations closed 4am - 1:30pm

View Specific Station Comments

South-East Busway

Eight Mile Plains - Very poorly communicated:

• Listed with a single replacement stop on Holmead St (Only generic A-frame there and no staff presence)
• Believe this stop was only serviced by 111 with all other routes completely skipping 8MP or cancelled.
• Route 555 was going past on M3
• Route 169 was not running during closure (See Route 169 and reopening section below)
• Routes 262, 280, 554 - not sure on exact arrangement (See route and reopening section)
  Tour de Brisbane 111 Holmead Terminus | G5144 after terminat… | Flickr

Upper Mt Gravatt - Okay:

• Replacement stops using Garden City interchange stop M and K are clear and easy to access.
• No additional observations.

Griffith University - Very poorly communicated:

• “No alternative stops for Griffith University station. Consider catching the 111 from Mains Road park ‘n’ ride.”
• Very cryptic wording but the usual arrange. Should instead read Mains Road park ‘n’ ride as the replacement stop rather than “no alternative”.
• Should definitely mention the 130/140 as the regular routes at the park ‘n’ ride
• As expected my 111 serviced the park ‘n’ ride and and I’m pretty sure based on AnyTrip that the 150 also did.

Holland Park West - Okay:

• Downstairs stop (Bapaume Rd near Sterculia Ave, stop 57/61) is as good as you can get for a replacement stop
• My 111 missed the turn and pulled up at Bapaume Rd near Mulsanne Rd, stop 61/57 and we waited for the 2 pax to walk up (~200m)
• Potentially only being served by route 111.

Greenslopes - Poor:

• “No official alternative stops for Greenslopes station. Consider catching a service, like the 100, from the Annerley Junction stops along Ipswich Road”
• Agree with no official alternative but the Earl St 120 and Logan Rd 180 stops should also have been highlighted.

Buranda - Poor:

• No written explaination but labels suggest that only 61 and 222 have a replacement stop on Logan Road.
• Understand route 111 was also servicing Ipswich Road at PAH/Buranda Village (At least outbound) but this was not communicated.
• Has implication of sending all OCR to SEB/120/180 connections via Mater Hill isn’t great but given circumstances probably the best option.

Woolloongabba - Okay

• 198 stop (Stanley, stop 9A) serves as a good inbound replacement stop
• Didn’t experience outbound replacements but seem okay (East Brisbane School for routes via East Brisbane and Jurgen St for all others) other than being some distance from Woolloongabba station and at high risk of being skipped as no longer “on the way” from the Vulture St off-ramp.

Mater Hill - Okay

• Standard replacement stops

South Bank - Okay

• Standard replacement stops
• Didn’t travel through before 9am

Cultural Centre - Okay

• Didn’t travel through before 9am
• Was meant to not be impacted but was left to be inferred rather than explictly stated in any service update despite every other station being impacted

Eastern Busway
Langlands Park & Stones Corner - Okay

• Old Cleveland Road replacements are easy to access and arguably faster than waiting for the busway portals off-peak and navigating the stations.

PA Hospital - Poor

• “No services running until 9am”
• At a minimum route 100 and the Boggo Road train station should have been mentioned.
• My screenshots have an additional note that for some reason didn’t appear in the web archive version “Route 19 will be running from the lower level stop underneath the busway station” (See Route 19 section)

Boggo Road - Average

• No written explaination but suggests to catch a train instead. This would be sufficient for most people but a note on alternative StationLink Route 19 stops and potentially formalise Route 196 as a replacement which was diverting via Annerley Road until 9am.

Dutton Park Place - Very poorly communicated:

• Not included at all in communications. Would have to be closed given UQ and Boggo both closed.

UQ Lakes - Very poorly communicated:

• “There are no alternative stops for UQ Lakes station. Please seek alternative transport or consider delaying your travel until after 9am.”
• No mention of CityCats or Chancellor’s Place as alternatives for inner-city bound trips

Inner-Northern Busway

• Didn’t get time to properly experience or look into so won’t comment beyond the service update link.

Route Specific Notes

View Specific Route Comments

Routes with listed diversion details
Route 555 - Average

• Only CBD stop change until 08:30 explictly listed and I have no comment on this.
• Given scale of route 555 diversions on SEB including at least skipping Eight Mile Plains this route should have had it’s own detailed summary rather than generic inaccurate busway station level replacements.

Centenary (Route 450, 460) - Poor

• “From first service until 11:30am route 450 services will not travel into Brisbane City. Services will instead run express between Sinnamon Village and Oxley station. Please transfer to the train at Oxley to travel into the City.”
• Route 450 ran express from Sinnamon Village to Oxley station until 11:30. No explict mention of outbound services. Customers advised to transfer to the train. Express from Sinnamon Village means
• Oxley station had no stop level staff or signage to indicate when, where and/or if outbound trips leave. Got reassurance from a terminating driver that I was in the right place and outbound service should continue until 11:30.
• Saw 3x terminating inbound route 450 in the 21min I was there (Suggesting some seriously late running for a half hourly route) but all seemed to have a good 20 odd getting off for the train
• The outbound 450 arrived right on the hour (which I had guessed would be required to meet the rest of the timetable). There was no other passengers at Oxley and no one boarded until the Mt Ommaney shops where I got off. We went express from Oxley station to the Park ‘n’ Ride (We didn’t pull into Sinnamon Village sliplane or service Groggs Rd) then resumed the regular route.
• Based on AnyTrip all route 450/460 were following standard runprint blanking to/from CBD to continue next trip as if no diversion was occuring which is a serious inefficiency (See TfB operations section).
• “From first service until 11:30am route 460 services will not travel into Brisbane City. Services will terminate at Mt Ommaney Shopping Centre. During this time, 460 services will make an additional stop at Darra station. Please transfer to the train there to travel into the City.”
• My Route 460 outbound was timetabled to arrive at Mt Ommaney ~15min after official 11:30 diversion end. Based on AnyTrip the bus blanked via Centenary bridge and dwelled for about 15min to commenced from the off-ramp Glen Ross Rd at Sinnamon Park stop on-time.
• The phrasing of the Centenary service updates being purely focused on Cenetary to City trips means (as a more minor issue) that any customers who regularly catch them from the north of the river to/from the City were not explcitly targetted as having reduced service.
• Both routes were tagged as minor disruption which seems like a significant understatement.

Route 300 - Poor

• “From first service until 1pm route 300 services will run express between Racecourse Road, Ascot and Breakfast Creek Road at Evelyn Street, Newstead; avoiding Kingsford Smith Drive.”
• No exact last/first stop in Ascot given or map of closed stops along KSD which is very unfriendly

Route 471 - Very Poor

• “Route 471 will not operate until Sir Samuel Griffith Drive has reopened after midday.”
• Based on closure map there is no reason why services couldn’t have run only City to Birdwood Tce/Stuartholme College as per peak trips. If lack of driver facilties is a concern build special runs for the day with depot trips after or 5min blank runs to the 375 terminus (See TfB operations section).
• As another Brisbane route with very poor mixed route regular suburb <> CBD trips are suffering because of a closure on the touristy bit

Story Bridge Closure (227, 234) - Okay

• “From first service until 9am route 227 will run express between Edward Street stop 142, Brisbane City and Lytton Road at Mowbray Park, East Brisbane via the Riverside Expressway.”
• “Route 234 will not operate until the bridge reopens at 9am. The first 234 service departs Woolloongabba station at 9:12am.”
• Some of the clearest communications of this closure. Only improvement would be to explcitly call out ferry alternatives

West End Changes (60, 196, 198, 199) - Very poorly communicated:

• No map of changes
• Official road closure details have opening at 09:30am but service updates (except route 60) are from 9am.
• Route 196 no mention of exact first and last stop open. I observed a route 196 southbound turning from Stanley St into Annerley Rd despite service update suggesting running is via Stephens Rd.
• Route 60 and Route 199 - Mentions that terminus is not serviced and the alternative terminus but no explict mention that the intermediate stops are also closed.
• Route 60 - Based on AnyTrip seemed to resume West End ferry operations in some form at 9am (I first observed at terminus 09:39 but likely was earlier) like the 199 rather than the 12:30pm advised for this route.
• “From 4:24am until 12:30pm the Blue CityGlider (route 60) will not service the West End ferry terminal. Services will start and terminate at Mollison Street near Melbourne Street, stop 5, West End.”
• “From first service until 9am route 199 will not service the West End ferry terminal. Services will start and terminate at West End State School stop 9 on Vulture Street, West End.”
• “From first service until 9am route 196 will not travel along Gladstone Road, Highgate Hill. Services will divert along Annerley Road and Stephens Road.”
• “The first 198 service to run will be at 9:30am.”

Other Route Specific Comments

Route M2 - Poor

• Only mention of impacts is in the PA Hospital station details: “M2 will be replaced by a normal bus after station reopens due to Northern busway closures until 1:30pm.”
• This seemed to be a shuttle between UQ and Roma St only using regular articulated fleet.
  Tour de Brisbane M2 Shuttle Close-up | S1639 arriving into R… | Flickr
• This is a noteable change to both service and accessibility and should have been explictly called out

Route 19 (StationLink) - Poor

• As noted in the PA section the route was running to/from the PAH lower level stops via Ipswich Road. This meant the Annerley Rd @ Cemetery stops would not have been serviced and there was no service update communicating this.
• Watching the u-turn under the PAH was interesting (Terminated westbound, commenced eastbound) as straddling the tight turn meant the u-turn approach triggered phase wouldn’t activate.
  
  

Route 111 - Average

• Overall covered by station specific updates except for Buranda arrangement. As discussed seems to service Ipswich Rd PA Hospital stop at least outbound (Both my trip and one that passed while I was at PAH).

Route 120, 180 - Average

• Overall covered by station specific updates except for Buranda which these routes seemly skipped.

Route 170 - Very poorly communicated:

• Also impacted by Buranda issue but additionally Wellers Hill stop would not be serviced if going directly onto the M3 and this was not communicated eitherway.

Route 150 - Poor

• No mention of Griffith Uni arrangement.

Route 169/209 - Very poorly communicated:

• The first three inbound 169 trips of the day (8am, 8:30am, 9am) didn’t operate. No outbound trips during closure period. The 9am trip was cancelled via Service Update due to the delayed busway reopening but there was no notification for the other two trips.
• Wasn’t watching the 209 as closely but the 9:16 trip appeared to be the first trip to make it to UQ (M2 shuttles were on live data). Believe the 8:16 was cancelled too without a service update.
  
  

Route 280 - Very poorly communicated:

• First outbound trip was during closure (08:55 ex-GU).
• No explict communication. Overheard another passenger who got off my 111 and was trying to transfer to this and called TransLink up on the phone and was told to go back and wait at the temp stop on Holmead St.
• Driver tried to turn into SEB at 8MP at 09:01 while blank running to Griffith and ended up having to layover in the public drop-off zone in the car park as the enterance was closed.
• Was the first bus through 8MP station at 09:20 out of service IB then returning from Griffith in service at 09:30.

Route 262 - Very poorly communicated:

• First outbound trip was during closure (08:20 ex-GU) and do not know how/if it operated.
• Second outbound trip (09:20 ex-GU) was impacted by extended closure. Came-off M1 off-ramp at 8MP at approximately 9am but as busway was still blocked turned onto Miles Platting Rd east and was not seen again.

Route 554 - Very poorly communicated:

• First outbound trip (09:02 ex-GC) did not pass through Eight Mile Plains station. Exact status unknown.

Busway Reopening

I arrived on the 111 outbound at Eight Mile Plains (Holmead St temp stop) at 08:58 planning to catch the 09:00 169 inbound. The bus operating my 111 departed out of service. With the busway scheduled to reopen at 9am I figured it was safer to walk to the platform. During this I saw the out of service 262 and 280 as described in the route sections, overheard the TransLink phone exchange in the 280 section and saw a fair crowd on the platform.

Photo of Eight Mile Plains at 09:06 (6min after planned reopening).

I joined the crowd which was steadily growing (Although there was also a fairly constant stream of people giving up on waiting). On AnyTrip I saw an inbound 111 depart Holmead St at 09:08. The first busway bus passed at 09:20 however this was the out of service 280 blank running to Griffith. Finally at 09:30 the 280 returns stopping at the outbound platform followed by the terminating 111. This 111 immediately turns around to form the first inbound service off the platform at 09:32 followed straight behind by a 555 inbound and the 09:30 169 inbound.

There was a few rightfully unhappy passengers who were sitting on the platform for up to 40min without an update (since ~08:50).

Going down the busway on the 169 it felt like a very rushed opening, especially around Buranda where there was still road closure signs up and speed signs covered. We also passed at Greenslopes station a 130OB going down the M3 at 09:45 so the resumption of busway operations was very messy.

TfB Operations

Throughout the day it felt like the operating model of Transport for Brisbane which appeared to be try and run the regular Sunday shifts despite significant diversions on most routes was not effective. It seems insane:

• To be treating short running route 450/460 trips that are losing 10km+ of service distance as normal trips and covering that distance out of service in both directions unncessarily.
• That the first inbound trip from Eight Mile Plains was at least 10min after the busway reopened (Based on blank running 280) when the Garden City depot is so close.
• The route 471 was completely cancelled all morning despite only the last 2 stops being closed and a regular route 471 terminus (Birdwood Tce/Stuartholme) being unaffected. Access to both depot and nearby 375 all-day terminus (5min) possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

[Verbatim9]

I think from next year the busway should be off limits considering Brisbane metro will be running at capacity by then. The only time the busway should be closed is for maintenance and upgrades not for sporting events.

[Keryn]

Thanks @Pionsix for your detailed description and collation of all that info about the disruptions.
Both this year and last year I had to puzzle out how to get somewhere on time on the Tour de Brisbane morning. This year I had to get from the southside to Ascot on the 300 route (as the Doomben line doesn’t run on Sunday). Until a day or so before, the journey planner had no mention of the disruption on the busway or 300, even though there were flashing signs at the busway about the TdB closures. On the Sunday, the journey planner had the detour message you posted, which may make sense to a local but I don’t know the area and in the end I decided to get the train further north and get a bus south to Ascot.
I’m surprised at how unhelpful Translink’s ‘service updates’ are, for this situation and others. Does Translink employ anyone who knows how to communicate with public transport users about service availability and alternatives? If not, can we encourage them to recruit someone with those skills?
For the TdB, there’s an additional problem that the the traffic consultants for the event also have an uninformative website on road closures with no explanation of the pedestrian implications of the closure (are the footpaths also closed, can a pedestrian cross the closed road to get to the nearby ferry stop, etc). Last year I called the traffic consultants to ask whether it would be possible for a pedestrian to cross the closed Grey St South Brisbane to get from the train to the ferry, but the “communications” person had no answer.

The failure to communicate in a meaningful way with pedestrians and public transport users looks more like a systemic problem, they’re not set up to do that. Which seems a major gap for a transport agency.

[Verbatim9]

Greenville Station is getting a longer raised platform.

[ezekial]

@Pionsix

It feels like the focus is on avoiding travel (Disruption was well advertised at the stations in the lead-up and through digital channels) rather than how to actually travel during the disruption (Because everyone can just drive instead right? ).

A great summary @Pionsix of what was no doubt a schemozzle of a situation. I observed the (Brisbane City Council branded) A4 printouts stuck to bus stop signs closer to the city in the lead up to the day, which is always a sign that TfB is preparing for a demonstration of something less than mediocrity. Even the regular Gabba events suffer similar fates.

Having real time assets that are switched off when it really matters is an ongoing problem that really irritates me. If we had a public transport agency, I would raise it with them, but as we don’t have one there’s no point.

@Keryn Yes, Translink’s service updates can be quite poor. My understanding is that often they simply publish what information they have been provided by their ‘service providers’, in this case Transport for Brisbane/BCC (which may often be last minute, when BCC is involved, for reasons I suspect that are more political than a reflection of competence) – even though they are in theory a contractor to Translink and shouldn’t be directing Translink but here we are.

I agree with @Verbatim9 that with M1 services running 24 hours? by next year, the busway should be off-limits for such events. Perhaps we should write to TransLink on this and ask what the intention is next year?

[Beerwatcher]

No announcements of this closure on any inbound or outbound services I caught yesterday… “now arriving at Graceville station, if this is your station prepare to disembark” as we barrelled past the platform doing around 80km/h.

[Jarrod]

I hope it’s a fully raised platform!