You can never completely close that stretch of Grey Street if you want QPAC to still be able to operate. This is QPAC’s Loading Dock - pretty well directly opposite South Brisbane Station’s driveway. All of the equipment and materials required by performances - including things like large set pieces for the Lyric Theatre and Lighthouse, concert equipment for the Concert Hall, etc. - are delivered via trucks and vans to this common point.
Then further down the road you have this access point to QPAC’s private underground carpark. Not open to the public, I assume that this carpark is utilised by QPAC staff and/or the venue’s performers - either way some level of car access to this will likely need to be maintained, as the access around the other side has been eliminated with the closure of Stanley Street access past the tunnel.
You have to remember that not all traffic on Grey Street is simply passing through. Most through traffic would already avoid South Bank at all costs. My bet is that a lot of Grey Street’s traffic either originates from or is travelling to South Bank locations specifically - be it visitors, office workers, local residents, delivery vehicles (30+ restaurants would need a lot of presh produce deliveries), service vehicles, etc. Cutting Grey Street will not stop this traffic, some of which is vital traffic to keep the precinct operational, it will simply redirect it and could end up overwhelming the few alternative roads that exist.
In that case a simple time-based closure could help a lot, between 6am-9pm to keep the busway running at full operational capacity for a major part of the day while keeping access to critical traffic at witching hour times.
You could put some makeshift boom gates and maybe a quick 15 second pedestrian light phase to allow people to cross without having to use the QPAC/Queensland Museum overpass.
Well I’d want someone to have a look at whether removing motor vehicle traffic would help. As I’ve said, it might not help much, but given the context and th le massive volume of passengers on Metros and buses, even a small time saving is worth it.
You might be right! As I’ve said, at peak hour I suspect a lot is through-traffic, but I don’t know.
If the number of through-trips is low, then diverting them to alternatives won’t hurt anyone.
Re all the loading bays and car parks- I don’t see any problem keeping them in operation if Melb/Gray is closed.
I’m not saying we should close Grey St to cars - but I think preventing through traffic is not a bad move. If the only vehicles travelling on Grey St in the vicinity of QPAC are there for deliveries/private parking, then this stretch of Grey St can absolutely become a low speed shared space.
I have no idea how many vehicles are using Grey St to travel specifically to or from the South Bank precinct. With the proposed changes coming to Grey St courtesy of South Bank Corporation, there will likely be far fewer ‘local’ vehicle trips made in the future.
By the way, BCC’s decision not to build protected bike lanes on this stretch of Grey St is shocking. That the pedestrian crossing outside QPAC is controlled by traffic lights and isn’t simply a wombat crossing is equally poor.
I would convert one of the bridges into a busway (effectively duplicating the busway between Roma Street and Wooloongabba) to allow extra capacity to cater in a future metro to the Redlands. This busway could include stops at QUT Gardens Point, Queens Wharf and North Quay. Meanwhile the other bridge I would pedestrianise, have cycle lanes, have some markets there and also put gardens in something like New Yorks High Line. Would also be another great spot to watch river fire from.
But wouldn’t you then overfill the existing busway with more capacity than it can handle thus creating somewhat of a gridlock when they merge into one at Buranda?
Is the congestion at woolongabba turn off and buranda still bad? The southside network reform cleared meant there are definitly less buses in the peak going past woolongabba turnoff. There is also some merit into having some limited full time services in the southern end of the cbd that are currently peak hour rockets only (like 131,137,206,217 etc)
In my experience, the Woolloongabba turnoff was never that bad even pre-BNBN. In any case, I’ve not noticed any appreciable difference inbound or outbound there.
Buranda has improved due to the (slightly) longer platforms, but there are still some queues, particularly outbound. Griffith Uni has gotten a little worse, but nowhere near old Cultural Centre levels.
And without one, someone coming from the BCEC Grey Street or South Brisbane Station and heading to Fish Lane would need to cross Grey Street, go up the overpass, cross over, go down the overpass and then cross Grey Street again.
Even without Grey Street traffic to contend with, that would be a detour adding a good 5 minutes to what is currently a simple crossing of Melbourne Street.
Also, there has to be a stop sequence on each outbound lane at Grey Street due to the Platform 2/Platform 3 crossover, and another stop sequence at the Busway portal to allow buses to/from West End to cross the portal. Even removing Grey Street will not allow fully free flowing buses through there.
I was down there today and had a chance to watch the signals cycle through a few times. Short version: getting peds across Melb St at Gray St takes up lots of time, and cars don’t get any longer than peds, so as others have said, I can’t immediately see any possible time saving for buses from closing the intersection to cars.
The other thing that was obvious is how many more pedestrians cross Gray St vs Melb St. There is significant overcrowding on the ped waiting zones too. Watching for a while underlined how much of a public realm improvement it would be to pedestrianise a 10m section of Gray St either side of Melb St.
It also underlined the giant missed opportunity in not under grounding this section of busway
I have a very simple question, but is there any good reason not to extend the 555 to Beenleigh immediately?
To me offering interchange with the GC line that doesn’t involve going through the suburban backstreets
Yes I know there are reliability issues from going off busway, but to be fair, we now have the Metro providing the trunk service and it seems dumb not to jump at creating a continuous public transport alternative along the M1 .
To me, the 3-4 minutes that might be saved vs the 553/565 (remembering that congestion on the M1 is often so bad that 555 drivers take Nujoolo Rd to avoid it) isn’t that worthwhile, compared with say upgrading the 553 to every 30 minutes.
The other issues might be demand management.
The 555 would likely take around 58 minutes from Beenleigh to City Hall, off-peak. The train takes 68 minutes (all-stops) or 50 minutes (express). While this is far from an ideal situation, it might lead to more people taking the bus, a far lower-capacity form of transport. Even against the express train, that runs every 30 minutes off-peak, if you get to the station, and there’s a bus in 5 minutes, but 20 minutes until the train, which one will you take?
We might have a situation where people at Loganholme and Springwood can’t board the bus.
It’s not 3 to 4 minutes though because you have to factor in the time to change buses at hypodome plus of course the little fact that Only some of the buses onwards connection.
To me running a low frequency connector between two trunk routes seems asinine, especially since one of the corridors is the busiest road in the state.
I get it ….when you look at the network Map technically it is possible to get from locations along the M1 corridor to the Gold Coast via public transport, but it relies on making two transfers in a row working well and in fact three if your onwards journey involves Light Rail
As for demand management well what happens when the Gold Coast line is running its reduced capacity due to the faster rail project.
Finally I don’t see why this has anything to do with BCC since it’s a Logan Clarks route.
The traffic from Loganholme to Beenleigh is atrocious in peak hour. Particularly at that godforsaken roundabout between City Rd and the highway entrances and exits. The recent 563 realignment took it away from the roundabout, probably because of how much time they were losing just sitting there waiting for a gap in traffic. I can see why they’d want the 555 to avoid it until there’s some sort of bus priority infrastructure there.
iPhone Photo 04.02.2026 by Nathan Murray, on Flickr
