Go bigger than a meagre shuttle service!
Cleveland to Springfield orbital rail service via Yeerongpilly/Corinda.
Not feasible to re-open Tennyson station. You have a perfectly fine and capable bus service in the area.
If there is to be a frequent Tennyson shuttle from Yeerongpilly to Corinda, how would that impact freight traffic on the Tennyson line?
I don’t see why it couldn’t. AIUI, the biggest issue was the shuttle blocking a platform at Yeerongpilly, and the conflicting movements, which shouldn’t happen post-CRR, either with a shuttle, or a Doomben-Yeerongpilly via Milton service.
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The main object here isn’t to reopen Tennyson station, it’s to provide a better connection between the southern and western lines.
You won’t be able to sell the Tennyson shuttle idea if its only going to service two stations. Otherwise your better off with a bus. It is not cost effective to run any length train as such as short distance.
How does a hypothetical Cleveland to Springfield service not provide a better connection between the southern and western lines when it is running on these lines?
Linking Ipswich and Redlands together without transferring to Boggo Road or having a convoluted bus service between three different LGA’s makes sense. They are the only two regions not directly connected to each other. We have Ipswich to northside, Springfield to northside, and Cleveland to FG, but not Ipswich to Cleveland directly… why?
Also if such as proposal was considered, it would have more than enough reason(s) to include the Ripley/Ipswich extension as part of the project.
While I agree that cross city options would be great, this option would literally be running a single service in each of the three sectors that would be in operation post CRR, meaning that delays would have a massive effect and also capacity would be greatly reduced on every sector.
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Why? The most expensive part of running a train service is the driver. It costs next to nothing to have use an existing train and existing train infrastructure.
A bus also requires a driver (albeit a lower paid one), but otherwise the costs are not that much different.
This is the same as people arguing for running more 3-car sets during off peak. Why? A 3-car and a 6-car train cost the exact same to drive around
Because that doesn’t go through the CBD, simple answer.
In addition, running services from Cleveland to Springfield/Ipswich via Tennyson introduces SOOOO many new challenges, conflicts and infrastructure problems that need to be addressed:
-Flat junction at Boggo road
-lack of peak capacity on the outer Cleveland Line
- lack of counter peak capacity on the inner Beenleigh line
- flat junction at Yeerongpilly
- lack of electrification and 4th platform at Oxley
Again it comes back to what I think we should focus on as an advocacy group. Can we
-
talk about something achievable with minimal infrastructure investment in the short term (shuttle)
-
talk about a project which has no prior government support, and requires massive infrastructure investment and network rewrites to make happen (Cleveland to Springfield service)
That is not to say that by achieving Step 1 (shuttle), that doesn’t mean that in the long term we can have the goal of achieving Step 2 (Cleveland to Springfield) many years down the track. However, we should focus our message on Step 1 so we actually get something over the line, rather than going too big too quick
You could imagine a train service starting at say Darra then proceeding to Corinda, Yeerongpilly, then Buranda and finishing at Cannon Hill.
Unknowns/research questions here would be peak and off peak frequency, train path availability and popularity.
I’m not necessarily advocating this option, just outlining that it exists. The T5 Richmond-Blacktown-Parramatta-Liverpool-Leppington service does something similar, but it’s one of the lighter patronage lines.
The Cleveland side is a single service line.
The Springfield side is a single service line.
From Darra to Corinda, and Yeerongpilly to Dutton Park will be 3 services.
How is that any different from the northside from Roma Street to Albion when they run 6 services on the same line?
Where is it written that train services must all go to the CBD?
Why must it go there when Boggo Road station is becoming the next Roma Street station?
I wasn’t aware that the maintenance, labour, cleaning, and costs of using water and electricity for one train was “free”. You might as well just automate all of the trains then let them drive themselves to profit. The automation would cost more to implement than anything.
Go big and if you make enough noise about an issue then someone will take notice and they might even revisit the Tennyson issue. Nothing is stopping BTQ from asking TMR their thoughts on this or for them to do an internal study on this.
At least BTQ is talking about the Tennyson issue and offering workable solutions.
The T7 Olympic Park shuttle in Sydney exists. I’ve no idea how much it costs, but it’s also quite short (5 minutes one way, 6 the other), so quite similar to a Corinda/Yeerongpillly shuttle.
Because such a service would cross too many sectors and have too many flat junctions. It’s a non-starter.
False. How is Logan directly connected to Moreton Bay? Anyway, what is the purpose of directly connecting two LGAs which don’t even touch? I would rather see improvements for Ipswich/Logan (and I don’t mean the rubbish, circuitous, and frequently late 534), Logan/Redland (e.g. improved span, including Sunday services, on Route 282), and Brisbane/Moreton Bay services (e.g. 357 extension to Strathpine station, instead of having it finish on some random street in Brendale).
Not sure that would be relevant, as these services would most likely use the Dutton Park flyover (eastbound)/Y link (westbound), not stopping at Boggo Rd. This would make interchange a PITA, though, which is another reason I don’t think this is a good idea.
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Interchange to Boggo Road can be done directly via The Ferny Grove line, otherwise transfers can be made at Dutton Park for rail options or Buranda station for bus options.
How is the flat junction at Yeerongpilly a problem. Roma Street station has countless flat junctions and they made it work.
Interconnectivity - offer a potential direct rail connection to Ipswich and Redlands without going to Roma Street to transfer. You can have both rail and bus improvements too.
Its no wonder why people don’t catch public transport in SEQ.
The T7 works because it has a stadium as the main attraction and it is the only heavy rail connection to it. Parramatta will be extending the light rail network to Olympic Park.
Meanwhile a shuttle from Corinda to Yeerongpilly stations on its own is hardly a trip generator, as compared to the T7.
Why dump people off at a station when you can take them all the way on the same line and at the same time.
True, although that presents another hurdle as QR are very reluctant to let passenger services use the DG flyover. It’s not impossible but another administrative bother.
You’ve summed up the issues well @Axilya but further to your points:
Aside from the flat junctions mentioned above, Roma Street to Albion is 4 tracks, with 6 platforms at Central. Dutton park to Yeerongpilly is 3 tracks and counter peak will be stretched to near capacity post CRR.
You would have to sacrifice additional services on either gold coast or Beenleigh line to enable the service you’re describing. For instance yes there are 6 services using the quad between Roma Street and Albion, but the airport and Doomben lines only get 6tph in peak so the capacity gets spread quite thin across those.
So again, let’s aim for a shuttle first.
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And if you go via Boggo Rd, the train will need to reverse there. Either way isn’t really a good choice.
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If the tunnel isn’t full and you’re OK with terminating at Yeerongpilly we probably don’t even need a fourth platform. However this does assume Gold Coast trains won’t stop at Yeerongpilly.
(I assume any Tennyson line service would terminate at Corinda P1 for sectorisation reasons.)
In AM peak then with the ex-GC trains taking the bypass track on the west it’s plausibly possible for Tennyson line trains to terminate on P3. Ex-Beenleigh trains would use P2 and all outbound on P1.
Now, in PM peak we need two outbound tracks so now Tennyson has to share P3 with counter-peak all-stops services.
The nice thing about Tennyson & Yeerongpilly is that the express saves about 3 minutes on the all-stoppers between Yeerongpilly and Boggo Rd, so if you have a train every 2.5 minutes through CRR alternating express and all-stops, you can contrive to have them both go through the Tennyson line junction at the same time provided they get to have two tracks in that direction.
If you’re at say 16tph in PM peak with 4tph of that running all-stops counter peak, it’s not impossible to turn a Tennyson service at Yeerongpilly P3. Express and out-of-service trains would go around via the bypass track and the Tennyson train has a ~10 minute turnaround in between all-stops services on P3.
However I don’t think QR would go for that, there’s at best 2 minutes of spare time in the turnaround and an out-of-service train goes through almost immediately before the Corinda service departs P3.
From my exploration it’s possible to get a shuttle to Boggo Rd and turn there (with a choice of spare platforms!) while only using one precious counter-peak slot.
This does of course assume a less-than-full tunnel because of the shared counter-peak track.
Conclusion: @SeekTraining’s fourth platform is by far the most robust solution from a timetabling perspective.
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As far as I am aware, the flyover is not electrified. Given the seeming impossibility for them to electrify more logical and short(ish) sections like Oxley - Darra, what are the chances of them sparking the flyover? I’d say not very high.
QR does retain one operational 2000 series rail motor at North Ipswich though (with others on lease/loan around the state) 
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Further to discussion above, here’s a diagram showing the 4th platform. You can see as per these drawings of the CRR track layout at Yeerongpilly (this is RFPC9, from November 2020, latest variation I could find anyway), the westernmost track coming from the Tennyson line doesn’t conflict with any of the lines heading north/south.
At least on the surface, it appears to have room in the corridor for a 4th platform, which I have gracefully added with my super-professional MSpaint skills. I don’t pretend to be an expert so I can’t say for certain if this would actually be possible, but from a layperson’s perspective it seems plausible.
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