I am thinking about how the public transport connections of smaller towns (1000-5000 population) in southeast Queensland, seems very disorganised with some towns being served by translink weekdays and Saturdays, and getting 50 cent fares like Esk, Laidley, and Fernvale, some towns being served by private rural bus services a couple times a week without any translink subsidy like Boonah which costs 37$ to get to from Brisbane on their service, and towns that don’t have any services like Dayboro and Marburg, with the latter not even especially far away from Ipswich, this seems unfair to me as these towns are not especially remote and have significant populations but don’t have any options without a car, and this isn’t even considering similar places outside of Southeast Queensland like Murgon and Yarraman that also don’t get translink services despite not being especially remote. I think that there needs to be some kind of review by the state government into expanding translink to rural areas that don’t have an adequate service provision, it doesn’t need to be especially comprehensive I think just a daily run would suffice in serving people who would otherwise would not have any other way of getting out of their towns without a car. If anyone else has some other places in Queensland that are in a similar situation I would like to hear it.
The reason towns like Esk, Laidley and Fernvale have bus services (although next to useless, in the case of Esk, with one return service per day Mon-Sat, and nothing on Sundays) is largely historical. QR used to run railmotors to Helidon and Toogoolawah, and when these services closed, they were replaced by rail-buses, which is what remains today.
Two areas I think should get local bus services are Mount Isa, population ~18k, and Kingaroy, population ~10 k.
Buses from Ipswich or Rosewood to/from Plainland and Regency Downs would probably also be beneficial. I guess if you went to Ipswich, Marburg could also be served.
only one a day. Thats terrible.
We need to make every Long Distance service run at least once a day and have coaches connecting to surrounding towns. The fact services like the Westlander only run twice a week is a bit of a joke and makes no one really use it. Can QR stop treating it as a tourist train and start respecting it as a lifeline for regional areas.
Problem is that the current Toowoomba rail alignment takes around 3 hours whereas the fastest Greyhound/Murrays coach takes over 95 mins. The 1800s era rail alignment would not be acceptable in travel time for a Public Transport service today.
Which is why, with inland rail, perfect opportunity to rebuild it
I think that what we really need to consider is if we can consolidate some of the privately run rural bus services into one operator like in NSW and Victoria, with shared equipment, policies, and subsidies as right now its difficult to find out which companies go where and how the system can be used.
You’d probably end up with monopolistic behaviour if that were to occur unless the consolidation is done by Government. I think there’s a good case for expanding Translink to include a long-distance division which is responsible for organising and standardising the long-distance routes.
Essentially, just like the suburban bus routes, have a state-run statutory authority determine routes, timetables, and fares, and then contract out to private operators.
Yeah I could have been more clear that by one operator I meant the state government. Although I think that it shouldn’t be like a legal monopoly like how it is with mainline railways historically in Australia, but I do think that translink should take over the planning of state subsidised routes, timetables, fares, etc… and either contract the services out private operators, run the buses themselves, or contract it to the local government like in Brisbane or another state government agency like Queensland Rail. I also think that in this scenario translink should require operators to purchase accessible coaches with wheelchair access because when I have used some of these services they did not seem to be accessible.