QR's Easter Rail Fail - Brisbane vs Everywhere Else

Melbourne - Easter trains up to every 10 minutes

BrizCommuter's most recent blog post looked at the awful news that Queensland Rail (QR) will reduce train frequency to hourly services over the Easter Weekend (14-17th April 2017), and the weekend before (8th/9th April 2017). It is not known whether this is directly caused by the lack of drivers issue, or whether it is an excuse for QR to reduce their driver overtime costs. In this blog post, BrizCommuter shows how bad this situation is, comparing Brisbane's rail services on these affected days to other cities in Oceana. Typical daytime service frequencies at stations 10km from CBD are shown.

Brisbane - 60 minutes (1tph)
Melbourne - 10 to 20 minutes (3 to 6tph)
Sydney - 15 minutes (4tph)
Perth - 15 minutes (4tph)
Adelaide - 30 minutes (2tph)
Auckland - 30 minutes (2tph)
Wellington - 30 minutes (2tph)

Winner of Easter Egg Train Hunt is Melbourne, with up to a 500% more frequent train service than Brisbane over the Easter period. Sydney and Perth are in joint second place, with four times as many trains as Brisbane.

Adelaide, which has half the population of Brisbane, has experienced improved service frequencies in recent years. Aside from a couple of short branch lines, Adelaide will be running twice as frequent train services than backwards Brisbane. In fact, its light rail line (outside of the scope of this comparison) will be running trams four times more frequently than Brisbane's trains over Easter.

Auckland, a city slightly smaller population than Brisbane on its own (excluding the rest of SE Queensland) manages to run a 30 minute train service on it's recently electrified rail network. Finally, Wellington, with a population of just 1/10th of Brisbane, still manages to run train services at twice the frequency of failed rail operator QR. It is thus confirmed that Brisbane will have the worst Easter train service of all Oceana (Australia and New Zealand) urban rail systems.

Sadly it is not just the frequency and number of train services where Brisbanites and SE Queenslanders will be missing out. Due to the Easter services running at different clock face times than usual, usual bus and train connections will be missed. So far, TransLink and QR have failed to effectively communicate the Easter service changes to customers, which will result in some commuters having a very nasty Easter Egg surprise from QR.

Brisbane the "New World City" is currently more like Brisbane the "New World Laughingstock".