Talking with some local councilors about upgrading public transport in the Redlands, yet to talk with state government reps and will report back on anything interesting out of that.
In the interim here’s some interesting news from my local councilor…
Possibly of interest to you… Redlands some years ago hosted a trial for autonomous vehicles and it was anticipated that into the future these types of vehicles could be used (first mile – last mile) of the commute, specifically joining the Capalaba Bus Interchange and Birkdale Train Station along Old Cleveland/Birkdale Road, which would also eventually support the Birkdale Community Land. It is my understanding that the significant delay in bringing these types of vehicles into production in Australia has been the legal/insurance complexities.
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I’m happy to assist with this as I was the Planner for the Eastern Region at TransLink from 2005-2009 and lived in the area from 1989 to 2015.
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I’d love to know more of your insights - what you helped plan, what are the long term plans/desires for transport in the region etc.
The Redlands has all sorts of barriers to a good network. The population is quite spread out with low density development, the one train line is very indirect, Capalaba bus station is awfully arranged, and the main bus corridor to Brisbane CBD has no bus priority until Langlands Park. The train line is what it is and won’t change, however at least all the others can be fixed with the right capital investment and policies. But until that happens I think they’ll always have a second-rate network, because the passenger demand won’t be high enough to justify a strong increase in service levels. Ipswich and Moreton Bay are more populous and growing faster, and will likely be higher priorities for government funding as a result.
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I’ve thought many times how game changing it would have been for the whole region if a line had been built from the Cleveland line around Coorparoo through to Carindale and at least Capalaba - even better Cleveland, but I think there are too many barriers to make this feasible nowadays.
Back when construction was cheaper it might have been an idea, but then in the 1990s we diverted to building busways, which I think was a grave mistake.
To be fair if there is already an arterial road connecting the same areas that are proposed to be linked with public transport, it’s always going to be cheaper to use it rather than tunnelling. If we were serious about public transport in this state, maybe we could have explored an elevated train line over Old Cleveland Road. But now we can’t even get bus lanes on it.
And to some degree that’s the fault of the people. In a democracy, we get the governments we vote for. If people really wanted public transport solutions and were willing to vote on that issue, parties would be falling over each other to promise more public transport projects, but we don’t really get that in Australia outside of maybe Sydney.
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good luck getting anywhere with this council 
Council is too conflicted atm, Redlands has barely any money and Mayor Jos herself seemed pretty uneasy about the future of transit in the area when we had our meeting a few weeks back
Tracey said pretty much it’s a state thing and we don’t have the population to justify cost as it comes down to the bean counters effectively