Friday, February 24, 2017

No Adele-ation for Brisbane's Public Transport

Adele - doing an impression of Brisbane commuters
So "New World City" Brisbane gets one of the world's most famous singers for two concerts on 4th and 5th of March at the Gabba. What can possibly go wrong? Quite a lot...
  • Rather than holding the concert in "wholly capable" Suncorp Stadium, the 60,000 concert has been organised at the "totally incapable" Gabba, which can barely cope with maximum 40,000 crowds for watching grass grow Cricket matches. 
  • Adjacent Wooloongabba Station on Cross River Rail could easily handle the crowds, but unfortunately successive governments have failed to build Cross River Rail. 
  • The Gabba is a long walk from any train stations. 
  • The Gabba has a confusing and poorly designed method of handling after match buses, and just to add to the mess, the nearby busway station is closed after events (much to the distress of anyone not attending the stadium trying to catch a bus, or anyone trying to use "normal" bus routes to get home).
  • Brisbane City Council are playing the political game by pretending they weren't properly involved with the planning - they were. 
  • Brisbane City Council are also playing the political game by pretending that the post-event bus services on Sunday may result in a lack of bus drivers for the Monday am peak - driver sources disagree, claiming all overtime is accounted for. 
  • Some of the event bus routes start and end at shopping centres that charge for parking.
  • Queensland Rail's weekend evening frequencies are poor at every 30 minutes, are quite often cancelled with no notice since #RailFail, and finish at around 11pm on Sunday - many concert goes may miss the last trains. 
  • The only extra train services are to Gold Coast on Saturday night and Springfield on Sunday night - what about all the other train lines? 
  • There are rarely enough Taxi drivers available on a Sunday night at the best of times.
  • UBER will make a killing out of surge pricing.  
  • There is a large parking restriction area around the Gabba during event times, so drivers may have to park a long distance away, and Mater hospital car parks may fill to capacity (which is unfortunate for hospital staff and patients).
  • The promoter has been quoted as being “flabbergasted” by the public transport concerns. 
So if you are travelling to and from Adele's warbling, you are pretty much screwed due to the last decade of political failure when it comes to public transport. Queensland's tit-for-tat politics continues to make Brisbane be the embarrassment of the developed world. 

2 comments:

  1. You'd think that with Suncorp hosting just about every Friday night game in the Winter season, it was about time they did away with 'shuttles' and just added frequency to the network so people could get their normal bus/train to the venues? or is that too hard?

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  2. The shuttle buses from Suncorp work quite well, leaving every 30 seconds or so. The current bus network wouldn't be able to cope, as only a couple of high frequency bus routes run near Suncorp. The shuttle buses to Roma St then connect with the various normal bus routes from there, for those who don't want the 10-15min walk.

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