While that’s technically true, the problem is there’s only 3 tracks from Boggo Road to Salisbury, meaning the capacity to run those services just isn’t there even after CRR opens. The original plans made provisions for that by tunnelling to Yeerongpilly and adding extra tracks to Salisbury, but it was scrapped for the BaT tunnel and the current iteration of CRR didn’t go back to this unfortunately.
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Obviously I agree more tracks will give greater capacity and flexibility. Each track would have a nominal maximum of 24 trains/hour (tph) @ 2.5 min headway. Theoretical maximum would be 48tph in the peak direction. That is of course if the stopping pattern of the trains on each track was the same. Realistically you could get 24tph into CRR (express Salisbury to Boggo Rd) and probably around 12-14 tph max on the other track with a mix of all stops and limited stops via South Brisbane (results are dependant on exact stopping patterns).
Having ex-Beaudesert trains heading inbound via the Merivale bridge re-introduces the flat junction conflict at Boggo Road with ex-Cleveland trains unfortunately
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Well, there will be four stations between Helensvale and Beenleigh, and four tracks north of there for overtaking. At a 1 minute/station in stopping penalty that’s only 4 minutes gained by the express, so with each line at 10 minute frequency there’s plenty of room.
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Good to know! Although with the high speeds on that section of track would a 1 minute time penalty still be the case, or would it be longer?
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MyCityLogan: How much quicker will the Faster Rail project actually be?
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According to that article they’re predicting 200,000 passenger movements per day on the Beenleigh/GC line during the Olympics. That’s going to be interesting to see how that goes. Will they even have enough trains to sustain the network and handle those kinds of numbers?
Interesting that they are saying it will be a 15 min time saving.
Based on the average time waiting being reduced… still no word on actual time saved on the train
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I’m very much looking forward to the new stations (particularly Loganlea) but I’m genuinely less than confident on the frequency boosts, as you will still be constrained by the three tracks between the CRR southern portal and the Kuraby junction.
You can only do so much with one track available in counterpeak anyways.
To be fair if waiting times are reduced because of increased frequency then on average the trip is quicker.
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It won’t be 10-12 bi directional express peak trains unless they do station skip.
This project is poorly named, should have been just called the Gold Coast Upgrade Project because then people wouldn’t expect radically faster commutes, just more trains and more stations.
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I do agree that the branding isn’t quite right, but I will point out that there aren’t any new station being added as part of LGCFR - just rebuilding of the existing stations (the new GC Station are part of Cross River Rail, not LGCFR).
That being said, between small improvements from Cross River Rail and this project, combined with the procurement of new, faster trains (assuming there will be track speed increases on the GC Line to match), could we end up seeing what, maybe 10-15 minute faster journeys as a result of the cumulative improvements?
In terms of vehicle-in-motion time the biggest potential saving LGCFR delivers is that the quad tracking means expresses can overtake all stops between e.g. Kuraby and Trinder Park in both directions.
Actually that’s an interesting point. If there’s space to quadruplicate just Salisbury through Yeerongpilly does that give counter peak expresses enough space to overtake an all stopper? Answer: no, we need to save 5 minutes; assuming a 1 minute stopping penalty per station we’d need 5 and we only have 3 or 4 depending on how you count.
As v9 notes we’re limited in total capacity by the tunnel but you can fit 1000 people on a train so 200,000 people / (24 tph times 1000 people) = at least 8.33 hours of operation, not unreasonable.
It’s about 5 minutes I would speculate. Some idea of the time saving is known because you need it to calculate the BCR for the project.
The responses given in the article are evasive and unsatisfactory and seek to avoid giving a simple singular number.
The article is from just a small time local publication, it’s not exactly a bastion of investigative journalism.
K2B is a better project name.
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are there any station locations you would wanna see as part of LGCFR may I ask?
No, I don’t think there’s anywhere on the line where additional stations are necessary.
However, I would have liked to see Holmview Station moved further towards Edens Landing, to allow it to be orientated more towards Holmview Road. This would greatly improve the access to the station for people living in the suburbs of Holmview and Edens Landing. By comparison, the planned location greatly limits station access for people in the Holmview suburb, with the station being a half km walk from Holmview Road, and the carpark only accessible via a 4km drive around through Beenleigh, for example.
At present, the bus routes are unable to service Edens Landing Station, and do not service Holmview Station - instead, people in Edens Landing and the older section of Holmview (north of Logan River Road) have the option of going to either Loganlea Station or Beenleigh Station (and Bethania during occasional journeys - all via the 562), and the new part of Holmview are shuttled only into Beenleigh (via 567).
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