I had the need to travel between Loganholme and Capalaba today. The first route offered by Journey Planner was 76! minutes, and involved travelling via Victoria Point.
The next one was only 70 minutes, but got me there 5 minutes later.
Now, I didn’t expect a direct service, but I thought a reasonably-direct service from either Eight Mile Plains or Upper Mount Gravatt/Garden City shouldn’t be too much to expect.
The 262 takes 40 minutes from EMP to Capalaba, or 44 minutes from GC. Why is there no direct service via Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Rd?
It’s 2.5-3× the time taken by car. Cycling could potentially be quicker, unfortunately I didn’t have my ebike with me.
No wonder people drive!
</end rant>
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My partner commutes between Moorooka and Jindalee for work, and despite it being a 15 minute drive the public transport journey is an hour and a half. We absolutely need more suburb connectivity - there’s no world in which a PT journey should take you 6 times longer
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ive had a look at the bus network, 2 stations that urgently should have quality bus rail interchanges, to make any kind of away from city bus reform work. Are Sailsbury and Morningside.
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Well, the new semi-BUZ standard Route 125 should provide a good connection to Salisbury Station. That said, I wonder whether it is actually Rocklea that should be the major interchange station, given that all the routes that get near to Salisbury generally go pretty close to Rocklea as well, with the addition of the 100 as well (acknowledging that the 100 does stop at Moorooka as well, but if you want a single interchange that encompasses all nearby routes…)
At the risk of making the longest route longer, I have wondered why the Great Circle Line doesn’t include Mt Ommaney and DFO Jindalee in its list of connecting major shopping centres.
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The prevailing sentiment I’ve seen on both BTQ and formerly on RBOT is that the GCL really needs to be split into multiple routes, in which case it would absolutely make sense to hit DFO & Mt Ommaney. I imagine vanishingly few people are in a situation where the best choice is to ride the GCL the whole way around - it’s much more useful as an inter-suburb connector where delays caused by diversions like that don’t matter
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The only problem I see with that is with Rocklea station, the road access is quite convoluted. Not sure it’s ideally located for an interchange.
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This was one of the items decided as part of the policy platform!
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It definitely is, which is why I would advocate for either the resumption and redevelopment of properties along Railway Terrace to both create a proper bus interchange (as opposed to on road bus stations), and also a more prominent station address facing the Beaudesert Road side.
Salisbury does have a nice vacant block of land where you could do something like this, but the majority of prominent bus routes that service that station do so on the opposite site of the tracks.
I always thought if the GCL (598/599) was split into sectors, you could have the 591 which does the existing route Garden City - Indooroopilly and create a new route 596. It would be the same to Oxley Rd and then turn left, then turn right at Cliveden Ave and pick up the current 106 route to Mt Ommaney. This would also improve connectivity for Canossa Hospital.
As part of this, the 106 and the 467 could also be merged. The route would follow the 106 to Seventeen Mile Rocks Road and then follow the 467 route to Mt Ommaney via Jindalee. This would give a full time service connecting Jindalee to the train directly at Oxley. You could also make this new route travel via the Sinnamon Village retirement home in lieu of the 453 (or whatever that might become). This would maintain a direct link to both shopping centres from the retirement village.
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It’s worth asking, what makes for a good interchange? Many routes intersecting, obviously, but I’d say there’s more to it than just that. It’s better when it’s a place that has interesting things to do nearby if one has to wait a bit for their next service. It’s also nicer to wait somewhere that has activity and people around for safety, especially when interchanging at night. I’d much rather interchange in an area with shops and restaurants than in an industrial estate.
The perfect interchange is a place that’s a destination in itself, because it will naturally have many routes going there, without them having to make diversions and doglegs to get there. And it’s more likely to have those things I suggested above.
None of these stations really have that status yet, but let’s consider, which of them could become that one day? Salisbury has an advantage here, because it’ll be the junction station when the line to Flagstone eventually opens. That itself brings some activity. On top of that, both Salisbury and Moorooka have an entire side of their stations that has stayed above the water in every major flood. That’s important, not so much for positioning a bus interchange, but for shops and restaurants and dense housing being built around it, to make it a destination as well as an interchange. Current Rocklea will always be a big risk for this.
The area around Railway Terrace has some properties outside historical flood levels, but not many, especially on the northern side. While the southern side has more, the access roads will get cut off in a major flood. So I can’t see it being all that attractive for developers. Without that, it’ll never be a destination in and of itself. I fear it would become the southside’s version of Enoggera, a pretty unloved and underutilised interchange at a minor train station, surrounded by industrial estates and low density housing.
To resolve the point about different bus services located on either side of Salisbury station, I wonder if that can be fixed by linking up the separated sections on Lillian Avenue.
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If you’re going for the future destination angle, that’s not going to be either Rocklea or Salisbury, it’s going to be Moorooka. The recently ratified Nathan, Salisbury, Moorooka Neighbourhood Plan shows that, with the majority of higher density development zoning in the plan being located north of Hamilton Road. There’s a little bit of higher density nearby to Rocklea, but none around Salisbury.
Building high density in an area that suffers in floods as much as the current Rocklea station area does sound like a bad idea. Moorooka should be the location then, though I think there is a case for Salisbury to hit the Beaudesert Rd corridor.
thats a really good idea actually
We’ll just have to up zone it once the Flagstone line goes in.
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