Completely agree with this. I was also a protestor and I was thinking on the day how insane it is that traffic delays are apparently unacceptable (even though, as you said, there’s plenty of alternative crossings for cars) but the police & council are more than willing to shut down the only functioning north-south PT trunk for several hours instead. Cannot imagine how rough that would have been for people who don’t/can’t drive and were forced to essentially disembark at South Bank and walk into the city to continue.
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Back to the grind…
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Eliminating the R771 and merging it with the R770 is also interesting, and I kind of get it? It was a very lightly used shuttle between Nerang and the city while most of the heavy work is done by the R770 and 772.
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Really, really great to see route diagrams for railbuses now. If this is something that was advised by the RATLR Forum, then congratulations.
(But sadly the journey planner still hasn’t been updated with the new info…)
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It would also be nice if the GTFS feed reflected the colours in the route diagrams. I know that this is impractical for the ordinary bus diagrams due to the sheer volume of bus routes, but it should be fine for rail buses. The train lines have different colours afterall. It would help make them stand out on mapping platforms.
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I know this is against the grain of this forum, but at this point I’m almost ready to at least partially ditch public transport. The amount of closures are beyond a joke.
I genuinely don’t understand how closures have become so prevalent over the past couple of years.
The Gold Coast line has been hit particularly hard by CRR works but even apart from those it seems like we get more occupations than any other rail line in SEQ.
I was looking at the track occupation calendar and only next month the northern lines are getting a nighttime closure while services for Beenleigh and Varsity Lakes are pretty much unusable every weekend.
Who do I have to scream at to make this terrible behaviour change once and for all?
(And I don’t even want to think about the occupations that LGCFR will bring, knowing full well that the project won’t tackle the real bottleneck between Kuraby and Boggo…)
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The Fruitgrove Shuttle is very welcome.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about it but back in March I tried the Gold Coast to Fruitgrove transfer on Sunday midday and the shear volume of passengers (Would be at least a good 25-30pax) changing at Fruitgrove to the 150 was crazy (Google Maps was recommending it). Also noticed that passengers were transfering from the outbound 150 to the train (And a bus load got off just as the train pulled in and missed it).
Many of the pax had luggage (suitcases or hiking packs) which made for an awkward standing bus ride. Fortunately not too many boardings on this trip along Warrigal Road.
I have noticed this as well.
We have a friend who lives on the Gold Coast while we live on the Sunshine Coast. The last 3 times we’ve tried to visit them (or vice versa) on a weekend there’s either been a full GCL closure for CRR or at the very least an inner city closure for maintenance. Meanwhile North of Petrie we seem to only have a few closures a year.
Said friend is planning to come stay with us for attempt 4 this weekend…. and of course there’s another closure. The most viable option is 4 hours and involves catching 5 different services. For a 150km trip!
It is really hard to justify how this leaves anything but an awful impression on prospective public transport users (locals and tourists alike).
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Agree the closures are somewhat frustrating. Necessary evil. I expect there will be a lot more with K2B starting to gather steam.
It might be time to make rail replacement buses explicitly fare free. This was done in Sydney for rail replacement buses on the Bankstown line conversion.
Highly, HIGHLY disagree.
I agree that organisation of the closures is lacking at times but the sort of work that is going on does necessitate closures. I think it is better to close the line down and do it all in one hit, rather than stop start with intermittent closures spread out in time.
It is an interesting video. The problems with rail replacement buses are pretty much universal. The author does mention the changes with work place health and safety. Occupation of a rail corridor these days basically means trains must be stopped.
Authorities in Queensland have done some interesting things to try to mitigate closures. For example the temporary platform at Darra while the rebuild of Darra station proper. They do try where they can.
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The train timetable is up for River Fire and I noticed that they have based the sweeper trains on 20 mins or better.
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Yeerongpilly scored excellent frequency this weekend across modes. The extra GC trains as well as the station link bus equates to services 10 mins or better.
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translink still hasn’t uploaded the disrupted timetables for the upcoming season of track closures.
sigh
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It really is pathetic. It’s almost like they want people to abandon public transport for three weeks.
When is the season you’re referring to? We can send an email to our contacts in QR to spur it along 
September and October extended track closures - Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines
From Saturday 20 September to Sunday 12 October, there’ll be major track closures and travel changes on the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines.
Your journey may take significantly longer than usual with railbuses replacing trains.
Please consider your transport options as your best travel option may change over the 23-day period.
Allow extra travel time.
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