Definitely think heavy rail is the way to go on the NWTC. The ultimate idea for me would be a branch off CRR at Roma St and a tunnel out to Everton Park with stations at Kelvin Grove, Newmarket Shops and Alderley. It would use the corridor and eventually join the existing Caboolture line again. I’m not 100% sure what the best option would be. One would be to have it join at a new Fitzgibbon station located around Linkfield Road. The downside to this would be that it would take slots from the CRR core heading north. These would ultimately have to be replaced by services through the existing core.
I think you could also include options like 4 tracks in some sections north of Everton Park to allow express services for further north. Alternatively, you could just have the line terminate at Roma St on a pair of new platform. I think the buses could do so much more with a train line to feed into. A train from Roma St to Everton Park could do the journey in around 10 mins or so. This is far quicker than what any bus could achieve. I’m a firm believer that generally speaking, buses should feed into or connect with trains in the further out suburbs (old zone 4 and 5 - outer current zone 2).
Intersect caboo line at bald hills & align with m1 for a bit to griffin, northlakes, dbay onto bribie? That route would need green bridges for community improvement for recreation users linking burps east, beachmere & dbay (?). Just thinking different alignment on north side
My hot take with NWTC is that we shouldn’t have both it and Exhibition into CRR, since that breaks sectorisation or wastes capacity. So if we want to have NWTC into CRR, we need to come up with a different solution for Exhibition station.
I suppose my proposed metro route has subway along the Gympie Rd corridor to Chermside, and that would go via Exhibition, so that works in conjunction with a full-NWTC diversion of CRR.
If you want to diverge from the existing line north of Strathpine you’re probably better off going west rather than east - Narangba extends a long way west and it’s building out further and further, there’s the ultimately 70,000 new residents going in at Caboolture West etc…
Don’t like either of those proposals. Option one parallels the future metro expansion plans. Option two fails to utilise the NWTC as a straight line shot from the north to the inner city to its fullest extent, forcing trains to take that awkward 90 degree turn and travel parallel to where most people want to go. Furthermore, look at how painfully close to the FG line it gets without any interchange. It’s a proposal for a tunnel that could go anywhere yet they choose to avoid that opportunity.
The better of the 2 is the Chermside one but it should be punching straight through to Strathpine.
NWTC would be a nice to have but I am increasingly of the view it makes much more sense to connect the biggest trip attractor on the northside to the CBD and multiple northside lines. My ideal would be to branch the FG line at Alderley with 7-8m headways inbound of there. Caboolture and Sunshine Coast trains via Chermside, Kippa-Ring trains via Northgate.
Would it be a big problem if the NWTC line stopped all stations from Alderley to Bowen Hills? It takes around 10min from Alderley station to Bowen Hills with the FG train stopping all stations. Express running wouldn’t really save much time due to the curvature of the inner FG line.
Furthermore, the Midland, Ellenbrook and High Wycombe lines (running every 15min off-peak each), shares one two track rail corridor between Claisebrook and Bayswater; there definitely will be more capacity to run two lines between Bowen Hills and Alderley is the NWTC lines stops all stations. Furthermore, with the NWTC line speed going up to 160km/h, the journey times to SC via Alderley and NWTC would not be affected much (if not improved).
You don’t need to worry about trains stopping on the FG line that are coming from the NWTC, as the NWTC will never happen in the next 20-30 years, if ever unfortunately.
Weren’t there plans to build tunnel stubs in CRR at Roma Street - before the northern portal - to link directly to the NWTC via Kelvin Grove, Newmarket, and Alderley? I think the plan was scrapped during cost cutting. Big mistake as it’ll mean long, disruptive closures to ever enable building.
Yeah those were removed in one of the project changes.
Tbh I’m leaning more and more towards not using NWTC for Sunshine Coast services.
NWTC can be used for local services serving the NW suburbs (McDowall, Everton Park etc) as a spur of the Ferny Grove line. Post CRR Sector 3 will have plenty of spare capacity for additional services.
New alignment for the SC line can be a big ol’ tunnel, connecting in somewhere south of EJ. Station at Chermside.
A spur from the FG line isn’t practical for express services, so you’d need to tunnel from somewhere around Alderley all the way to the city anyway. At that point just put the tunnel anywhere, no need for it to use NWTC alignment.
Uses the easier parts of the NWTC without disturbing the bushland in the middle. Solves most of the problems and provides for high capacity metro-like services between Alderley and the city/Southbank.
Yeah there you go, something like that Ideally I’d have your purple spur on the NWTC join back up to the brown further north, but yes that would involve tunneling, so maybe you’d just build stubs as stage 1. The main benefit would be to get that extra catchment around Bridgeman Downs, but also to provide another connection to the city in the case of disruptions/trackwork
From connecting SEQ 2031 judging by the two stopping patterns on the line the plan initially for the NWTC was to quad track it, using one pair of tracks for local all-stop services connecting to the FG line/sector 3, and the other pair of tracks for express services running fast all the way to Alderley and into the CRR tunnels
Would prefer NWTC use a different alignment past Carseldine towards to Bribie via Northlakes, Dbay, Beachmere…So it doesnt clash and compete against existing Sector 1 line
You reckon that the train will do some street running on South Pine Road when branching from Alderley station?
But on a serious note, I reckon that there would be two places where NWTC branches out from the FG line using a tunnel junction between Newmarket and Alderley stations with underground platforms at Alderley for NWTC.
The tree-line would be resumed and FG line will be shifted south to clear space for the tunnel portals. The car park may be resumed as well.
If the NWTC branched out before Alderley, would this still warrant an underground station at Alderley? Or will Newmarket be the junction for the FG and NWTC lines?
I tried to draw a plan which the northwest line branch off and be elevated until it crossed Stafford Road. ie the following bit would all be elevated (don’t know the details and obviously this is just a guess, but something like this)
Ideally I’d have your purple spur on the NWTC join back up to the brown further north, but yes that would involve tunneling, so maybe you’d just build stubs as stage 1. The main benefit would be to get that extra catchment around Bridgeman Downs, but also to provide another connection to the city in the case of disruptions/trackwork
