Why would it be built out to the southwest either? At least there is already development between Deebing Heights and Ipswich CBD. Any new development around Peak Crossing or Warrill View is speculative.
Nobody is pretending this project would get built in the next ten years. But it’s better to advocate for it eventually getting built one day than to settle for a worse outcome like BRT replacing new rail extensions. It’s cheaper to build transit corridors once than to build it twice in different modes.
Both. ShapingSEQ (the regional plan for SEQ) lists them both as “principal regional activity centres”, the second highest category in their hierarchy (the highest being capital city centre i.e. Brisbane CBD). There are 14 other PRACs to be fair, but few are as close together as Ipswich and Springfield, while also being far enough away from Brisbane CBD to not be entirely in its economic orbit. They’re also in the same council area, with a population growing at a breakneck speed. I think a heavy rail line between the two would be a good investment in the future growth of the area, if planned well with TODs.
It’s probably not going to be built in the next 30 years tbh. Gold coast line was first extended from Beenleigh in 1996. 30 years later, it’s still not fully built out. The Sunshine coast line has a similar time horizon.
If this were Perth i’d be more optimistic - rail is about half the cost there and lines are built out end to end, generally.
An 8.5 km extension would cost about $2 billion from Deebing Heights into Ipswich, the implication being that a bus is likely to run for many decades first.
Members are free to hold their own perspectives, i’m just pointing out the most likely outcome.
In looking at the protected corridor north of Yamanto, it looks like much of it runs up the Bremer River and Deebing Creek, so I can only presume elevated rail would be the only realistic option for a heavy rail solution. Obvious implications for price, realisticness of environmental impact assessment etc. given the nature of the corridor.
Do we want Brisbane to continue growing outward beyond 50km? How much is too much? If the government are stupid enough to allow development beyond that, it should not be the role of public transport to try to service all this poor development as it will simply encourage further and further sprawl. Where does it end?
The problem for Ipswich is that it’s quite constrained by its location along the river, and is flood prone. Personally I’d prefer Springfield to become the future CBD of the Ipswich area, given it’s more a more central-ish location and not flood prone.
Just a few more observations about Ipswich, is that Ipswich only came about in the 1800s because it had 3 key attributes for its location - the river (for transport - before the train and car arrived), coal and limestone for mining.
Those three things are no longer a thing and now has those previously mentioned problems working against Ipswich, hence why Springfield is a far better CBD than Ipswich will ever be, and it’d be in the best interest for ICC to densify and plan for Springfield to be the future CBD (could even eventually either merge BCC into Springfield or create a new council with Springfield in the name, moving all the council assets over to Springfield which has much larger footprint to work with without any issues that Ipswich has).
The State Government really needs to also close Ipswich Hospital IMO, it’s in a constrained spot and up on the side of a steep hill, makes it dangerous and difficult for those with mobility issues to access the hospital, and there’s very little space for it to expand, other than upwards. Side note: the location of Ipswich Hospital came about again in the 1800s due to the belief at the time that health facilities be located on top of hills to capture the breezes as they thought that access to a breeze would be good for health.
Considering that the Government have commenced the $1 billion Ipswich Hospital Stage 2 expansion project, it’s not going anywhere fast.
Neither I suspect is Ipswich City Centre - the region of Greater Ipswich is geographically centred around the Ipswich City Centre - Springfield is an outlying area, separated from most of the LGA by the White Rock Conservation Area and the wasteland that is Swanbank. I would point out that the one issue that Springfield has as opposed to Ipswich, is that all the land at Springfield is privately owned by the Springfield City Group - as opposed to Ipswich City where the council owns property and community assets, the State Government owns property like the hospital, etc.
While I could see Springfield becoming a more prominent central business district than the Ipswich, I can’t see Ipswich ceding its roll as the city’s civic centre. It would be similar to Logan, where the city’s business centre is Springwood, but the Civic Centre is based around Logan Central.
A question on notice of interest.
QUESTION:
With reference to the Ipswich to Springfield rail line, business case (QTRIP 2604930)—
Will the Minister (a) advise how much funding has been allocated in the 2025–26 financial year
for the business case and (b) detail the activities to be undertaken in 2025–26?
Answer: https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/tableOffice/questionsAnswers/2025/779-2025.pdf