The eastern busway plans were archived over on RBot. Fairly sure @Metro posted them on here in a thread somewhere too
Extraordinary claim to blame the Palaszczuk government for failures in public transport when they built Cross River Rail which the Newman government had tried to kill as well as tearing up just about every transit lane in the city.
Hard to find quotes from back then but here’s a Courier Mail article that is clearly the Newman government softening everyone up for cancelling all future busway development. No Cookies | The Courier Mail
I don’t agree with this, I’m afraid. Cancelling transport infrastructure projects is a human decision, not a natural event. The State government clearly had plenty of money to waste on freeway expansions and many other (in my view) patently silly ideas in the years since 2011. This is even without raising extra revenue which they have done many times since then, including via the Flood Levy from 2011 onwards.
We need to be clear-eyed about why the project failed to get built last time if we’re going to get something good this time. Cost was clearly relevant, but costly projects get built all the time. I’m more interested in the other reasons politicians felt comfortable cutting the Eastern (and Northern) Busway but not other projects.
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I’m up for more discussion and debate - I apologise for ruffling people’s beliefs by suggesting that Palaszczuk should be lumped in with Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman.
As the Courier Mail explores, Newman did cancel the busway expansions insofar as we know.
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No apology needed!
You may actually be right to assign some blame to Pala for the demise of the busways, since she was actually the Transport Minister under Bligh from Feb 2011 until Newman won the election. She was appointed in the “flood reconstruction” Cabinet reshuffle.
So far in this discussion people have blamed both the Bligh and Newman governments, but no one is totally sure when the project first got canned.
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But as for the ‘reasons why politicians would’ve felt comfortable scrapping the eastern/northern busway as opposed to other infrastructure projects’ is still an interesting inquiry.
There is one possible hypothesis I can think of:
- In the early 2010s, people could’ve still doubted the busways as achieving ‘mass transit’ in the long term, decreasing the morale for future expansions.
Finding who or when it was scrapped might be hard as I dont think it was ever funded for construction (or even final planning and design). So it is not so much a case of allocated funding being withdrawn (or a GCLR stage 4 case of reviewed and cancelled future plans) but more it was not funded in post-2011 flood budgets to progress to next stages. So it might require comparisons of budgets (and QTRIPs?) to find when funding for it stopped appearing for future years.
Infrastructure Australia have also subsequently come along and recommended the bus lanes and prioritisation approach.
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Article from 2008. Interesting reading …
Brisbanetimes 300 homes to be resumed for Eastern Busway
… The state government today confirmed the route for the Eastern Busway from Buranda to Capalaba, to be built in stages over the next 20 years.
Construction of the first section, between the Princess Alexandra Hospital and the South-East Busway at Buranda, has already begun and is due to be completed in late 2009.
The government has committed $465.8 million for the next 2.7km section between Buranda and Main Avenue, including $123 million for 96 property resumptions.
Construction will begin by mid-2009 and finish by early 2012.
Ms Bligh today confirmed a further 256 properties would be affected on the rest of the route, either by total or partial resumption, easement, or volumetric resumption - taking land from under a property. …
You have no need to apologise. I am certain there’s much more that goes on behind the scenes amongst all parties.
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