One of the more interesting ideas I’ve seen, is to build the Flagstone line as a driverless line and hook it into the speculative “Brisbane Subway”, so essentially follow the proposed alignment from Flagstone to Salisbury, and then dive underground, service UQ, West End on a straighter axis, and then pass through the city, and onwards to Bulimba and Hamilton.
That means Flagstone operates on its own sector and CRR can be entirely for GC and Beenleigh trains, likewise the Merivale Bridge only for the Cleveland line.
That certainly resolves the “three tracks through Fairfield” problem, but combining Flagstone and an inner city subway is an odd combination of demand profiles. I suspect that sees a lot of trains terminating north of Flagstone.
The better option in my view is to do a Sydney Metro with Sector 3 in its entirety, fully upgrading the Ferny Grove and Cleveland lines to either GoA 2 or GoA 4, while using the newfound capacity upgrades of a CBTC signalling system to create branches to Redlands proper (Victoria Point, maybe?) and Strathpine via NWTC.
Sector 1 will need upgrades on both ends to actually get proper suburban and regional service patterns, while Sector 2 would just need a new fourth platform at Oxley alongside electrification of the fourth track.
What we have to keep in mind is that Sector 2 needs to split in two relatively soon. It’s only got what, 2 TPH spare right now? Even with ETCS 2 that only gets us +4 TPH or so, and then the next intermediate step of borrowing some peak capacity from Sector 3 isn’t a great solution.
So that suggests the endgame is Clevewich, and Vic Point plans should work from that basis.
Not sure where else to put this but look who got on a podcast with the former premier and shadow opposition transport minister. I wasn’t aware of this @ImmyOnBoard, but congratulations.
Just electrify the stupid fourth track at Oxley, and run the Ipswich express services to Bowen Hills with the Springfield ones being the locals to Brisbane Airport and Shorncliffe.
+100 for completing the quad to Darra, but I’m not quite seeing what else you’re seeing.
Springfield’s presumably on the subs Darra to Roma St, and we can handle the merge with Ipswich expresses on the mains north of Milton, that’s baked in. But given Ripley and some reasonable growth projections I just don’t see the westside fitting into 24tph through the city long term? There’s a reason the ICRCS called for a second tunnel. I suppose you could also assume CBTC and retrofitted PSDs on sector 2 through the city…
yeah, although I think you were pushing nimbyism too hard, people in the Gold Coast wanted it, the state government just wanted an excuse because they knew it would be really expensive, so they just want to kick the can down the road and have another government deal with it when it gets built anyway.
I think the issue there is that it mucks up Freight on the Merivale and presumably makes it the problem of the inner Beenleigh line.
And if NWTC is done as a metro it means you can’t use as a fast corridor to the Sunshine Coast (unless the intent is to have that as a quad with Metro operating next to QR)
