New bus lanes

Queensland Greater Brisbane
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I’m posting this looking for some help.

There are stacks of major roads that need bus lanes to help improve bus reliability, speed and frequency, and I think any rapid improvement for PT in Brissie should prioritize building them alongside new light and heavy rail.

I’m involved with a push for bus lanes on Ipswich Rd, between Moorooka Station and Woolloongabba (and beyond to the Story Bridge!).

I’m after some help with a bit of research, plus I’m interested in your ideas for effective tactics to build political support for bus lanes on this corridor.

——> The task: I’m hoping someone good with data can throw together some figures comparing the estimated number of people travelling by bus on Ipswich Rd vs by car.

With some educated guesses that should be doable based on the published data on vehicles per day by corridor, plus the Translink data on patronage.

I think the most useful period to focus on is weekday peak, rather than all-day figures.

The relevant bus services that use some of that part of Ipswich Rd are the 100, 110, 112, 113, 116 and 125, so the bus passengers number will be pretty substantial.

I’m hoping to use the numbers in the next stage of the campaign, and if someone can come up with a simple methodology, the same kind of comparison might be helpful when pushing for the same thing on other corridors (ie Logan Rd, Old Cleveland Rd).

The LNP committed in the 2024 Council election to “bus jumps” on Ipswich Rd, and the State govt in 2023 (?) was undertaking a study on “bus priority” for the same corridor. So far naught has come of either. Just this week the Council knocked back a petiton from some locals calling for bus lanes with some vague noises about clearways, transit lanes and their current fave, AI traffic lights.

If anyone has cool ideas for a grassroots campaign for bus lanes, I’d love to read about them.

Thanks in advance!

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I would be very surprised if you could get the State Government to agree to reducing Ipswich Rd to one general traffic lane in some areas.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the area, but IIRC there’s a two lane section southbound through Annerley. Northbound is three lanes all the way, which might be less of an issue.

Keep in mind Ipswich Rd us a major freight route in addition to commute use.

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Yes, a single general traffic lane isn’t really a goer. There are four lane stretches in Moorooka and Annerley.

My proposal would be to expand the road to six lanes where required. Some isolated sections have to stay at four lanes, for example at the railway line/Clem7 crossover.

The Council disclosed a while back that they’ve got a long term plan to expand the road to six lanes, and they’re already taking land dedications from new DAs in relevant areas.

I usually strongly oppose road widening, but in this instance the corridor is important enough that it’s worth it.

The rest of the land could quite easily be acquired, and impact on existing homes would be absolutely minimal, since most are set back a long way from the road.

The end result we should be aiming for is a high-quality priority BRT corridor with “Metro” (:roll_eyes:) style headways. The walk-up catchment is huge, and most other options for locals are highly vulnerable to congestion.

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I’m curious, why would Council be widening Ipswich Rd? Unless I’m mistaken, this is a State-controlled road.

Anyway, in the event they do so, what guarantee is there that there would be any benefit for public transport?

As we saw with the KSD widening, extra lanes went to general traffic only, when they should be bus lanes at least between Breakfast Creek and Racecourse Rd, IMO.

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Just because a State or Local Government won’t do the right thing doesn’t mean you don’t campaign for it!

Transit or correctly termed Bus Lanes are one of the simplest and cost effective forms of public transport improvement.

We have had decades of only improving public transport when the cars get an equal or even more improvements. Look at how that’s worked out!

Bring it on!!

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Nah, it’s a Council road north of the Ipswich Mwy.

To be clear, I would only support widening Ipswich Rd to build bus lanes. Widening it for general traffic would make thing worse.

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I would rather put resources into things that have a realistic chance of happening.

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Look I’m the same, which is why I picked this issue to work on. Both Council and State have actually publicly announced plans to do some version of bus priority on this corridor. I’m just pushing for them to do it properly.

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I’m 100% in agreement with you on this. Widen to 3 lanes each way, where possible, and the third lane to be a 24x7 bus lane.

Trying to get bus lanes without the widening would be like bashing your head against a brick wall.

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In a corridor that’s mostly 3 lanes already.

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The most obvious candidates that come to my mind are Coronation Drive inbound and Ann Street (specially with their proposed Golden Glider).

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Does anyone have the time and data chops to have a stab at this?

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I could probably give it a go on the weekend coming. I don’t think I’ll find the time to prior to that.

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Cooked something quick up on my lunch break for the period from Jan to April this year. There’s a few pretty major limitations, but here’s my rough draft:

Bus trips:

Bus trips for named routes
Bus trips for named routes438×183 5.18 KB

Road trips:

Car trips
Car trips915×186 5.9 KB

Road trips are sourced from the BCC key corridor report, while PT trips are sourced from Translink’s origin-destination reporting data. The limitations with my approach were:

  1. Road trips include all vehicles, so each bus is counted there as well
  2. Road trip data is for BCC’s defined corridor, which may be longer/shorter than what you’re interested in
  3. BCC’s data only includes total weekday patronage, so I’ve almost certainly overestimated total road use as there’s no weekend data so I’ve assumed that for every day of the month
  4. Bus trips are total patronage for those routes. The data is segregated by origin and destination but it’d take more time than I have right now to filter this to only passengers who are on those routes during that stretch.

Theoretically issues 1 and 4 are solvable - you could get the total number of bus runs and subtract that from road trip count, and it would be possible (but a pain in the ass) to filter to only bus journeys that either, start, end, or pass through Ipswich road. 2 and 3 though are likely data limitations unless you can find a better dataset.

If anyone wants to play around with this here’s the file: ipswich-road-pt-car-usage.xlsx (28.4 KB). I’ve just done a quick PowerQuery transform, nothing too crazy if you’re familiar with it. The output should be saved into the file but you’ll have to relink the source data on your end if you want to make any changes.

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@ari this is looking good so far!

At the moment, looking at March 2025 that looks like roughly 6,600 bus trips per day compared to 38,000 car trips per day, with all the caveats you’ve mentioned.

We’re getting closer to an apples-with-apples comparison for the AM and PM peaks. I suspect that comparison would show a higher share of bus passengers vs drivers, purely because that’s when more bus services run.

It’s really that comparison that decisionmakers should be focussing on- i.e. how to use scarce road space in periods of peak demand – given that outside peak the traffic is generally lighter.

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I do want to give a shout out to the humble transit lane here. I don’t think we’re in a position to get bus lanes on most corridors any time soon, but the maths on a peak hour transit lane speaks for itself.

maths

We know peak hour car occupancy is something like 1.2 people/car, which means at most one in every five cars has 2+ people in it.

On a three lane road that means you’ve got 1/5 cars eligible for 1/3 of the lane space…

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Are the transit lanes we have enforced? I get the science behind T3 lanes, but I also know that there is good science for ramp meters and variable speed limits on the motorways, but unless there is a police officer right there, these things are just plainly ignored by (anecdotally) most people, and I cant help wonder if T3 lanes would be the same.

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In my experience, the rarely enforced T3 lane on Mains road between Kessels road and the M1 onramp is generally obeyed. There’s maybe like 1 in 20 cars that doesn’t care and just uses it anyway. Not great, but not bad enough to cause congestion to prevent the 130/140 from getting a clear enough run

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I generally agree with that, but in this case I’m proposing Council’s existing plan to widen Ipswich Rd to 6 lanes should proceed, with the 5th and 6th being bus lanes. If that’s going to happen I reckon bus lanes is the only acceptable outcome.

On the generally “winnability” question - we should remember that the Northern Transitway (for all its limitations) and the nascent Eastern Transitway are both bus-only treatments.

The seven or eight really major arterials in Brissie (Ipswich Rd, Old Cleveland Rd, Wynnum Rd, Gympie Rd, Coro Drive) probably need high quality bus priority, so we should aim high.

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I cant speak for the T3 lanes but I can for the Nothern Transitway (that I will never forgive Labor and Mark Bailey for bending the knees for the local car yards and make it peak only):

  • driving there on peak time you can easily observe that no one disrespect the bus lanes;
  • and then on off peak time no one also uses it because both buses and cars cant be fucked to go into the lanes to later on merge back because there are two or three cars parked.

That is an incredible case to be converted to a 24 hours bus lane, specially now that there is no election in sight.

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