Honest question, is there an effective way I can lobby QR/Translink for more late night services on the Sunshine Coast Line? Because my experience last night was ridiculous.
My other half and I had a night out in the city yesterday which was cut short when we realised the last train for the night departs Roma Street just after 8:30pm. That’s it, no more trains past Caboolture from then onwards. If we hadn’t realised, we literally would have been stuck and forced to get an Uber from Caboolture to the coast.
It prompted me to do some research this morning and found that the SCL is seemingly an exception rather than the norm, here are the departure times from Central for the last Saturday night service on each line.
Sunshine Coast: 8:37pm
Springfield: 11:43 pm
Gold Coast: 12:29 am
Beenleigh: 12:34 am
Shorncliffe: 12:43 am
Cleveland: 12:47 am
Ferny Grove: 12:56 am
Ipswich: 12:58 am
Caboolture: 1:07 am
Redcliffe: 1:22 am
Every other line gets services until basically midnight, and the SCL does get late night services on Friday, but if you want to catch a show at QPAC, go to a footy game or concert or even just have a night out on a Saturday like we did, you’re out of luck unless you drive down to Caboolture.
If they stick to the current timetable with services every 90 minutes (which I have my own issues with, but whatever) they would only need to add 3 more services to bring it in line with the rest of the network:
10:07pm
11:37pm
1:07pm
But somehow that’s asking too much. The demand is there by the way, the large park and ride carpark at Caboolture was almost full. I will be writing a letter to the minister but if anyone else has any ideas on why trains stop so early or other ways it could be fixed (I’d even take a railbus from Caboolture) I’m all ears. It will be quite embarassing if people visiting for the Olympics in 2032 miss the last train at 8:37 and have to get a taxi home.
It is a very fair question. Sadly, the Sunshine Coast Line is treated poorly overall for sure. The appalling situation with the low frequency, particularly north of Nambour should have been sorted years ago. That Saturday night timetable is anti-public transport!
Thanks for pointing this out. We can raise this in our meetings with stakeholders. You can also create a petition to force a response in parliament if you wish.
We could put out a media post along those lines that Saturday services should match Friday services to Nambour. Sunshine Coast people shouldn’t need to wait until 2030 to be able to catch a late train from the city back to the Sunshine Coast on Saturday evening.
Hell, there should be AT LEAST a couple of departures of the 649 railbus for those services.
I tend to joke at times that the best rail service the Sunshine Coast gets happens about four times each year, when railbuses run from Bowen Hills with half-hourly express timetables.
Some good ideas here, thank you everyone. As mentioned, I am writing a letter to the transport minister this week and will also send a copy to Translink/TMR Sunshine Coast and my local council representative (as we pay a transport levy which is supposed to go toward advocating for service improvements, albeit mostly bus services).
At the bare minimum I would be more than happy if QR just extended the 649 to operate on weekends and basically have 2 buses just running Caboolture → Nambour and back until the last outbound train, but unfortunately the 649 doesn’t run on weekends at all.
It really is bizarre comparing the Friday and Saturday night timetables, the difference in service levels is staggering.
I’d suspect you’ll also need to hire third party security if the 649 was to be extended to Saturday nights (can’t see the parties involved paying $ to operate the 649 during daylight Saturday), and IIRC 649 was one of the lowly patronised bus routes during the previous major Bus Review prior to the (previous) failed bus restructure in the BCC region.
Presumably, although rail services on the SCL don’t really have security, late at night when there are security guards on board they disembark at Caboolture and head inbound again. Thankfully the services are relatively busy even late at night so it doesn’t feel too unsafe. Considering the 649 is technically (I think?) managed as a QR RailBus service I wonder if QR, Translink or Kangaroo Bus Lines would make the call on this?
Not surprising, using the service capacity visualiser that @alexjago developed it looks like 649 outbound averages about 6 passengers per service. In my experience some services are quite busy while others are empty so the demand doesn’t seem very consistent.
Obviously more rail services to bring at least Saturday’s late night services in line with the rest of the week would be the best case, but running extra 649 services as a ‘nightlink’ on Saturday nights just seems like a cheaper option than rostering an extra 3-4 trains which then need to likely run empty back to their respective stabling yards.
I’ve gotten better at counting the number of services from GTFS recently. But I haven’t gotten the improvements into the Fluvial code yet let alone the available visualisations. So I wouldn’t necessarily trust the service numbers in the SVGs yet.
By my current method the 649 ran about 150 services in the month of May 2025, but in say September 2022 the old method gave 170 but my new method gives just under half that.
(Also as you can see I haven’t updated the visualisations for a while!)
By all means! This thread summarises most of my thoughts, I’m sure those who are more experienced dealing with Translink and QR can spruce it up into something a bit stronger.
Might be as good an opportunity as any to also raise the atrocious 90 minute frequency on weekends too and remind the new government about the yet to be delivered extra services that were promised with the new stabling yard at Woombye.
I recall the Blue team (especially the deputy premier and transport minister who are both from the Sunshine Coast) have in the past been pretty vocal about how the region has been underfunded, perhaps now with the budget imminently being handed down it might be a good time to remind everyone of the fact. They are proud to talk about how they are investing in the SCL with “The Wave” however that’s still 5-6 years and an election away, any improvements before then would be very welcome.
Happy to send out a press release on this topic if someone more knowledgeable about the area is able to do up a draft. This aligns well with the high priority policy ideas that were discussed at the policy platform.
I remember Fares_Fair from the RailBOT forums was their local spokesperson, otherwise I may be able to put my name down some time next year when work isn’t as busy
