Cross River Rail - Board Stupid!

 

 

Cross River Rail's Board

 

Brisbane's Cross River Rail (CRR) project appears to be heading from bad to worse. BrizCommuter has published many articles covering the following issues:

• Bottleneck at Mayne limiting CRR's ability to increase train services from the North.
• Bottleneck (3 tracks) between Dutton Park portal and Salisbury potentially slowing down contra-peak Gold Coast Line services, and reducing train services via South Bank.
• No provision for connecting with the North West Transportation Corridor. 
  
• Poorly designed interchange at Park Road/Boggo Road.
• Lack of progress on associated infrastructure, new trains, and ETCS signalling. 
• Project changes bypassing the Auditor-General. 
  
• Secrecy around proposed rail operations.
  

It has now been reported in the press, that the extreme track gradients and curvature of the Southern portal at Dutton Park may result in trains slipping on the tracks. Of course, this would not have been an issue if the Newman government had not moved the Southern portal from Yeerongpilly to Dutton Park, and then sold back the acquired land. 

With all of these issues, you would hope that CRR would have a Project Board with independent experts on rail who can question these problems? Lets have a look at CRR's Project Board:

- Mr Damien Walker, Director-General, Department of State Development, Tourism and Innovation (Chair)

- Mr Dave Stewart, Director-General, Department of the Premier and Cabinet

- Ms Rachel Hunter, Under Treasurer, Queensland Treasury

- Mr Neil Scales OBE, Director-General, Department of Transport and Main Roads

- Ms Liza Carroll, Director-General, Department of Housing and Public Works

- Dr Sarah Pearson, Deputy Director-General, Department of State Development, Tourism and Innovation

-Mr Matthew Longland, Deputy Director-General, Department of Transport and Main Roads

As you can see, CRR's Project Board is 100% Queensland senior public servant "yes men". Not even the rail operator Queensland Rail is represented on the Board. Thus there is absolutely no one on the Project Board who is likely to question the disastrous direction in which CRR is heading. The Cross River Rail Delivery Authority is also exempt from most Right To Information requests.

Unless the CRR Project Board pick their head out from the sand, then expect a Commission of Inquiry into Cross River Rail Fail sometime after its opening in the mid-2020s.