North West Transport Corridor (Trouts Road Corridor)

Queensland Greater Brisbane
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North West Transport Corridor

TMR_NWTC
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  • The corridor originates near Gympie Road and Strathpine Station in the northern extent and continues south through Bridgeman Downs, McDowall and Everton Park to connect with Alderley Station and Shand Street in Alderley.
  • The corridor’s origins date to the 1960s in the landmark Wilbur Smith and Associates Brisbane Transportation Study. The study recommended a North West freeway between the Brisbane CBD and Aspley via the suburbs of Grange and Everton Park.
  • While the freeway concept was abandoned in the 1970s, this section of the original freeway corridor was kept for future use as an arterial road.
  • The corridor was preserved in the early 1980s based on current planning standards for a 4-lane median-divided road.

Notes
Transport and Main Roads (QLD)
https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/community-and-environment/planning-for-the-future/preserved-transport-corridors/north-west-transport-corridor

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Gotta be one of the corridors with the most potential.

2 Likes
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Oh for sure. I mean, my grand idea would to have a line in tunnel branching from the CRR platforms at Roma St going up to Everton Park with stations at Kelvin Grove, Newmarket Shops and Alderley. The bus network could achieve so much more in the outer areas there if the train was there. Even with it using the Ferny Grove line, bypassing the Everton Car-Park in the peak hours would make the journey time by train at the very least competitive if not advantageous.

It would allow better frequency for feeder services around the Albany Creek, Bridgeman Downs and McDowall areas. If you design it right, you could have the services run cross country to places like Chermside, Aspley or even Toombul which would also improve overall network connectivity. Without supporting infrastructure like a busway, running long bus services out past the old zone 3 (about middle of current zone 2) can start to cause problems that a trunk service like a train could fix.

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I used to be a believer in the “NWTC from Roma St” grand plan but I’ve changed my mind because of Exhibition.

  • We can’t just stop running service to Ekka station
  • Sectorisation says that with grand-NWTC, all CRR services should run through NWTC
  • Ekka as a one-stop branch is possible but wastes CRR capacity
  • Roma St P10 does exist but we might want that for, e.g., Toowoomba services

Also grand-NWTC had this very ambitious mixed use applied to it (needed 3-4 tracks north of Everton Park for express service).

In the alternative is mini-NWTC, which has local service branching with the Ferny Grove line. This is convenient because post-CRR there’s heaps of spare capacity on the subs through the city.

And as for a tunnel from the north once we need more than four tracks Albion-Northgate? Go via Chermside. The Northern busway (or its upgrade) is the all-stops service!

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Another zombie proposal.

The tolled motorway option isn’t feasible, and it sounds like a heavy rail option has its own problems that haven’t been fully analysed.

It doesn’t help that the BCC is acting like a despotic de-facto transport agency, proposing rail and road projects with zero intention of following through.

1 Like
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Gonna say this, not a fan of strathoine as north end. Best if go bald hills and consider tunneling under or alongside the m1 for griffin,mango hill. North lakes, dbay, uhlmann, beachmere, sandstone point & bribie
Plus factor in green bridges linking communities at dbay, uhlmann/burps east & beachmere therefore complete missing link of mbc for the north side

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My Proposal for a rail line, build a new interchange at Bowen Hills or Albion, with a tunnel going to Alderly, continuing above ground to a new station at Everton park. Then tunneling to an above ground station at Bridgeman Downs, continuing to the Sunny Coast from Strathpine and Petrie.

While there would be tunneling, I don’t believe using the trouts road corridor would be appropriate, and without any underground stations the cost can be reduced.

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So long as we do better than a belated bus corridor… :frowning: Again!

2 Likes
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The current north coast line through Brisbane is not in the right alignment nor have the capacity to support regular fast rail to the Sunny Coast (Maroochydore and Nambour with duplication)

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North West Transport Corridor - Brisbane Metro Interim Solution

The current thinking around the NWTC has centered around surface rail or underground rail, with or without a road option. The costings of these sit around the $7-$10 billion mark, and the cost has probably increased since then.

It seems like government will take no action unless a less costly, simpler proposal comes along. The current thinking is to simply build the Gympie Road Toll Tunnel, which does little if anything to directly engage and solve the actual PT access and quality issues in this area.

How can we strip out the cost while also servicing the need for better PT?

  • Low Cost
  • Faster to build
  • Minimise need for new infrastructure (e.g. Tunnels)

Strategy

A staged incremental approach is a possibility. What could this look like?

First Steps

  • Service upgrades. Introduce BUZ services to Albany Creek and the North-West area generally. This is the fastest, lowest cost, simplest action that results in an improvement. It requires no new infrastructure.
  • Bus lane extension. The T2 lane on Kelvin Grove Road could be converted to a bus lane and extended from approximately Windsor Road Kelvin Grove to South Pine Road at Alderley. This would improve the speed and reliability of existing ordinary buses at low cost.

These steps would deliver quick wins, build patronage and improve reliability and frequency now versus any of the heavy infrastructure options. We could all agree on this stage IMO.

Next Step- Brisbane Metro to Albany Creek

  • Brisbane Metro to Albany Creek. The (BUZ) Route 359 or a similar route that runs the length of Old Northern Road & South Pine Road south to Enoggera would be converted to Brisbane Metro BRT. We would now have an 18.5 km Brisbane Metro service running from Albany Creek to the Brisbane CBD. This could run every 5 minutes in peak and every 10 minutes in the off-peak.

This option would be easier, faster and cheaper than a Light Rail or Heavy Rail option IMO as the corridor requirements are less strict for BRT and there is no need for a passenger to first travel to the NWTC corridor and transfer. That said, there is a possibility to upgrade the corridor to LRT in the future if the Brisbane Metro service there starts to become popular.

The Brisbane Metro bus would run on Old Northern and South Pine roads, and this could with with or without a T2 lane or bus lane, subject to needs assessment.

Next Step - Surface busway in the NWTC

  • Busway in the NWTC + Bike & Walk Path. A two-lane road carrying buses (busway) could be constructed in the NWTC. As buses can handle gradients better than rail and do not require substations, expensive tunneling, OHLE or long station platforms, the cost is likely to much lower than the Heavy Rail option.

An additional benefit is that the busway will provide emergency vehicles or ambulances serving Prince Charles Hospital very much improved access to the Northwestern suburbs. Buses would leave the busway at Everton Park Link Road and potentially use Pickering Street to flow into the Kelvin Grove T2 bus lanes.

Further Comments

The BCC report on the NWTC mentions Environmentally sensitive flora within Chermside Hills Reserve. The photo in the report shows a steeply sloping site covered in Xanthorrhoea (Grass Trees). This suggests that this site is likely located in the North-Northwest of the site.

A busway would follow the power supply corridor, which is cleared to some extent for the power line and exists at the far east of the site, parallel to Trouts Road.

Concept Map

  • Blue lines represent Brisbane Metro BRT routes or corridor
  • One corridor goes to Albany Creek
  • Another corridor goes to Bald Hills Railway Station via the NWTC
  • A third corridor branches off the NWTC and terminates at Chermside Shopping Centre, after stopping at Prince Charles Hospital (PCH)

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Concept route - Trouts Road showing busway corridor concept following the path of the electricity supply corridor

(station location markers are conceptual / artistic only)

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NWTC Documentation

NWTC_Motorway_Tunnel
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Chapter 14 Environmental Impact Assessment.pdf (3.3 MB)

20200722 - North west transport network community consultation report.pdf (1.2 MB)

Images from the final business case report and other reports as marked.

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Rather than starting with the false assumption “we can’t afford it” or worse “there’s no demand” better to identify the capacity needed to reach best practice mode share (aka Vision) and validate the project against that! Assuming there is no money just starts the spiral towards today’s worst practice mode share! It’s just a continuation of the last 50 years of planning.

1 Like
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Let’s look at some other possibilities than the very high cost ones.

The rail option has already been looked at in depth, the bus and LRT modes less so.

If you’d like to provide the numbers on ‘capacity needed‘ and how you reached them so that others can reproduce it, you can provide them here.

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When considering alternatives to rail through the middle Northside, we need to keep in mind that in the future we will also need more than one sector north of Northgate.

One way to do this is to shift sector boundaries to utilise the Subs capacity again. The in-place upgrade here looks like six tracks to EJ and four tracks to Petrie, no NWTC.

If you’re a “full NWTC from Roma St to Strathpine” believer, that replaces the in-place upgrade option.

If you don’t want to strand Exhibition then you’d prefer a tunnel under Chermside instead of using the NWTC corridor, presumably surfacing somewhere around Carseldine.

Now, I want to note that this is reasonably long-term stuff, it’s for once we’re hitting the limits of 9-car upgrades. So there’s room for interim stuff. But also in 2/3 options you’re not building on NWTC anyway.

In conclusion, Carthage must be the 350 and 359 corridors need to be upgraded to frequent all day service just like every other major corridor.

5 Likes
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I’m going to continue looking into the bus/lrt option here.

These other modes should not be off limits, and we’ll need another low-cost option to offer if we discover in the future that the Queensland Government isn’t prepared to spend $10b in this corridor.

The alternative - if the rail option doesn’t go ahead - is the do nothing option, which is what we have now, and will result in no improvement.

Heavy Rail isn’t the only option here, so it shouldn’t be the only option assessed.

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Yes. The rail options in the BCC report were all in tunnel and if this is the case then any reasonable alignment will do, NWTC is only required it is surface running.

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And why can it not be surface running as the corridor intended? The tunnel option was pushed by BCC to make…surprise surprise…a road and bus option the ONLY choice!

PS my job is not to do the end-state capacity planning. My job is to point out the utter failure that transport planning and use of BC to justify vanity projects has been to date.

2 Likes
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Filling out the Northern busway to Chermside (and not some half ass thing like the northern transitway) would go a long way to help provide another major trunk route on the northside, and be a good catalyst for major network reform on that side of town.

The surface corridor was largely poopood the last time NWTC conversations came round because a lot of the corridor is now protected bushland. It’s also extremely hilly, so it would require enormous cuttings anyway

1 Like
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The NWTC is not going to happen especially now that they are making Albion a major transfer hub. A train tunnel from Albion via Chermside to rejoin the Northern Line north of Carseldine would be the best option with just one or two stations to reduce costs.

If anything they could use the reserved land as a connector Bikeway for leisure a s commuting.

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The multimodal option which has a very large environmental footprint, and the insistence of a tunnel has acted to massively increase the cost which creates an incentive to just sit on the corridor and do nothing.

Well, it’s not my role either, so point taken but we’ll park that for now. I would expect similar or less demand than a busway to Chermside, on reflection.