Iâve never thought of that as an idea before but I like it! It also solves the bottleneck from Salisbury to Boggo Road.
The Yamanto proposal above is essentially is the long term plan for the Springfield line. Current plans for rail to flagstone and beyond are to branch from Salisbury instead, but also largely similar to what you have here
Yes but then we have issue with merging at Salisbury. Also I donât think the Springfield line should go all the way to Ipswich
Sure you no longer have the merging issue at Salisbury but youâve replaced it with the equally big issue of having to route the Ipswich, Springfield, and this proposed Flagstone line through just one track pair in the city. Routing the Flagstone/Beaudesert line through Salisbury and Boggo Road, assuming the triple track issue can be overcome, would allow interlining with Cleveland trains and more efficient use of the suburban track pair
Well the idea is we will split the pairs so that Yamanto/Flagstone go all stops whilst Ipswich goes Express. The main issue is where will they pair with beyond Bowen Hills because they canât just converge sectors. Perhaps take extra Ferny grove trains
I think itâs absolutely critical the Springfield line gets to Yamanto. I donât have strong feelings about looping it back into Ipswich.
The Western lines are already pretty close to hitting capacity limits in peak. The Inner City Rail Capacity Study (which is where CRR began) said that weâd need a second cross city tunnel a decade after CRR, for exactly this reason. This would create some capacity for Flagstone via Richlands.
In the third-party Minerva Plan (and on here) this new tunnel is called the âClevewichâ line, on the idea that youâve run through the city from the West, so you pop up on the Eastside. Assuming that takes over most of the existing Cleveland line, the Merivale Bridge is even less used, leaving room for trains from the South. So I think itâs better to for Flagstone to go via Salisbury.
Something I think a lot about is making the most of CRRâs 9-car platforms. The Gold Coast line will obviously be retrofitted to 9-car. But will the GC line need CRR all to itself? Only if demand grows about 4.5 times over from what it is today.
Right now I think we have a bit under 8 trains/hour from each of the GC and Beenleigh lines. So with CRR at 24 tph and a flying junction at Salisbury we have some capacity for Flagstone too. By building Flagstone for 9-car trains it can get more capacity (with less than 8 tph) than Beenleigh has today.
But eventually weâll have to kick one of the three lines out of the tunnel and back onto the under-utilised Merivale Bridge. It makes sense for it to be the Beenleigh line, which has a tonne of stations on an old, curvy alignment, and hence is harder to upgrade to 9-car platforms.
At this point, sectorisation requirements mean weâll need 4 tracks to Beenleigh. LGFCR means weâll already have them from Kuraby to Beenleigh. Even if we chose to keep Beenleigh in the tunnel and put Flagstone over the bridge, weâd still need 4 tracks from Salisbury to Boggo Rd.
This means weâll need to upgrade Salisbury-Kuraby to 4 tracks. Again, the alternative is to (eventually) upgrade the entire Beenleigh line for 9-car trains, which admittedly could be done later. But quadding S-K for sectorisation reasons is perfectly aligned with doing something like an express tunnel under PinelandsâŚ
tl;dr: build Flagstone for 9-car via CRR
Redcliffe to beenleigh
Maroochy to cooly
Nambour to beaudesert/flagstone
Ipswich to airport/doomben
Yamato to shorncliffe
Ferny to cleveland
I think that what they see pairing wise
Well then. Time to dust off MREX. If you donât know what that is, basically itâs an idea I have had where we would merge the Flagstone-Salisbury line with the long proposed Brisbane Subway to Hamilton via the CBD. MREX basically means Mass Rapid Express and it will be something like Sydney metro using automated trains. Will need to be grade separated and all that Jazz and it certainly wonât be cheap.
Eventually MREX will be a whole network with another line connecting Capalaba as well as a loop line connecting northern suburbs like Chermside as well as southern and eastern suburbs, but we are getting into dream territory here. If only we had the will power, we could have the whole thing up and running in the next 1-2 decades. Future expansions could also send it to the Airport as well or create even more lines
I think this is a mismatch between lines here. The Brisbane subway/actual metro route is perfect for high capacity, very high frequency trains with tightly-spaced stops, and will need full grade separation from mainline rail as well as roads. Flagstone is proposed to share & reuse an existing corridor through a largely rural area with wide stop spacings. Merging the two means youâre either:
- Spending a ton of extra money rebuilding the line to metro standards (and you have to keep the existing line open for freight and intercity traffic)
- Or building the subway as a regular train line, which limits the frequency and introduces all sorts of undesirable design limitations
Not to mention thereâs all sorts of design mismatches with rolling stock. Metro trains are designed for short trips with frequent stopping and starting so theyâre typically mostly standing room + no bathrooms, high acceleration but not necessarily high speed, and have smaller cars able to take tight turns/steep grades. Suburban passenger trains like we currently have are designed to have better long distance comfort (more seats, bathrooms) at the cost of capacity, higher top speed, and are larger & longer.
Both of these are good for their intended use-case and not great for the other. Standing all the way out to Flagstone on a train with no bathrooms sounds miserable, and attempting to have the subway take regular trains would heavily restrict the route and send the construction costs to the moon. Better to keep these two separate.
Itâs rural for the moment but in the next few decades that whole area is gonna rapidly develop
Regarding Yamanto, I have no issues with that being the terminus (although knowing local politics, there will be political pressure to extend that rail line all the way to Ipswich, even if it ends up being faster to just have route 515 running along Warwick Road to Ipswich with bus lanes). Politics and emotion doesnât always match with logic and planning principals.
Iâm sorry, Flagstone is only an hour out of the city. People can hold it and there are toilets at every stop. So with frequent service even if thereâs no toilet on the train, you could get off at one stop, quickly do your thing then get the next one.
No, not everyone can just hold it. From young children who arenât the best at giving forewarning as to when they need to go, to adults who may have diminished ability to âjust hold itâ due to age, medical conditions (IBC for example), etc.
Just because you could just hold it, doesnât mean everyone has that ability.
Caboolture is 58 minutes from Central, and people (including regular looking people in work clothes) relieve themselves on the train reasonably often..
Yeah but Ipswich and Caboolture etc are also an hour out by train, yet the EMUâs and SMUâs have done those runs fine without toilets onboard.
Speaking of toilets, I wished the NGRâs were a lot more clearer on whether the toilet door actually locks when you press the âlockâ bottom.
Currently, if you press the âlockâ button, all it does is emit a suction type noise to indicate that the toilet door is locked. And the red LEDs turn off into a matte white.
The problem belies in the fact that people have auditory and visual impairments, making it hard to decipher whether the NGR toilet is in fact locked or not.
A nice big âTOILET CLOSEDâ in red (in the inside) would be outstanding. Hopefully the QTMPâs will address this niche matter.
QTMP has a different way of signalling it iirc
I hate they removed buttons from QTMP. Given our wild weather, if no one opens the doors it keeps that weather outside of the train and keeps the air con in. Itâs more energy efficient in my opinion. One thing I instead would have done to QTMP is added a middle set of doors and also would have made the platform doors on Cross River Rail do this too. Ideally I would have just either ordered trains from alstom like Perths C series or would have just built more NGRs, but oh well. Looks like we are going ahead with QTMP. I like how the corridors are wider but donât like that it means less seats.