Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Quirky Metro - the delusion continues

Despite Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's Brisbane Metro idea being the worst idea since, well, the last time the LNP managed to stuff up Brisbane's public transport plans with the BaT Tunnel, Quirky is still rolling on in the land of delusion. This week we have seen a press release stating how many jobs the totally unnecessary construction will create. The SEQ Council of Mayors (purveyors of ludicrous plans such as the Cleveland Solution and the City2Suburbs bus tunnel) are also about to waste loads of ratepayers money on an advertising campaign to attempt to get the federal government to spend money on their ill-conceived ideas.

Here is a reminder why the Quirky Brisbane Metro is a terrible idea:

  • Busway congestion could be resolved by an almost $0 bus network reform, instead of spending $1.5b+ (more realistically $3b) on a totally unnecessary Metro system. 
  • It would increase journey times, as passengers would have to change from bus to metro at Wooloongabba and Herston to access Brisbane's CBD.
  • It goes against Graham Quirk's excuse for lack of bus network reform of providing one seat journeys. 
  • It has lower capacity than the existing busway.
  • It does not serve RBWH, PA Hospital, and UQ, three major trip generators on the busway network. In fact it annoyingly stops just one stop short of both RBWH and PA Hospitals.
  • Important parts of the design, such as the interchange design  have not been properly considered.
  • It does not provide any new journey opportunities, unlike the urgently required Cross River Rail. 
  • It is providing political distraction from the urgently required Cross River Rail.
  • It does not solve Brisbane's rail capacity issues, unlike Cross River Rail. 
Please, Graham Quirk, return to the land of reality - instead of wasting billions of $$$ on something that not required, start supporting Cross River Rail and bus network reform. 

5 comments:

  1. you guys should form an alliance, with "Back on Track" and coordinate your anti rail activities together!

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  2. Ugh, so this actually going ahead? Don't we get a vote or something?

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  3. Anonymous - BrizCommuter and Rail Back on Track are anti-completely unnecessary projects (such as the Quirky Metro), not anti-rail.

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  4. I'd be fine if it filled in a gap that was needed that is too much for buses, say UQ area, maybe red hill or new farm and spring hill...
    What sort of route could be popular for morning-evening uni / inner city yuppie hangouts and commuters?

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  5. Presumably you expect bus reform to solve busway congestion by reducing the overall number of buses through Cultural Centre at peak times. The problem is that there is limited scope to actually do this.

    As a commuter who catches a bus at Mater Hill every morning (of whichever route arrives first), I've observed a few things about how the busway works.
    1. Every single peak hour bus entering Mater Hill is crammed full of commuters.
    2. Most of these commuters are bound for Mater Hill, South bank or the Cultural Centre.
    3. Very few people board at each of these stations.
    4. Virtually every bus (which was packed like a sardine can at Mater Hill) is half empty by the time it crosses Victoria Bridge.

    I presume that the low proportion of bus commuters entering the CBD via Mater Hill is due to Captain Cook Bridge buses siphoning these passengers around the busway.

    It's easy to say that there are too many buses at Cultural Centre and they're all half full. But that doesn't make all these buses unnecessary.

    By comparison, you could go to Roma Street and observe that peak hour trains all arrive half empty from the north. Would this be justification to halve the number of trains running to/from the north in peak hour? Or are all those trains needed, it's just that half their passengers get off at central?

    ReplyDelete

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