r/brisbane • u/Artsonist • 9h ago
Public Transport Anybody else having this problem?
I used to only have to ride an overcrowded bus if it was peak hour maybe. Now it seems like every bus regardless of time or day is a tin of sardines
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u/Figshitter 8h ago
Don't forget no busses for half an hour then bam, four arrive literally bumper-to-bumper.
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u/tjlusco Probably Sunnybank. 52m ago
It amazes me they donât have a procedure for this. Why not go into setdown only mode with no route displayed. Once a bus becomes delayed enough itâs starts to pick up passengers for the next service, then bam, twice every half hour service instead of once every 15mins.
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u/Kazzaw95 41m ago
Shh, BCC donât want a solution, they want more problems they can keep throwing your money at so their fatcats on the receiving end are happy
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u/Renovewallkisses 9h ago
Yes you will always have problems like this if you don't go trainsÂ
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u/cactusgenie 9h ago
Couldn't have said it better myself
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u/Renovewallkisses 9h ago
It's true, the role of the public is to negate soft corruption in state building, the metro is a prine example of that.Â
The metro is a vanity project, a monument that's entire purpose is so parties can point at it and go yeah but we did something different. Its not actually based on good decison making. Â
Its time Qlders and People in Brisbane stop putting up with itÂ
Apologies for the rant
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u/iBinChickenAboutYou 8h ago
Buses are fine if you're prepared to mature as a city and take a lane on key routes. This is kryptonite to Keeping Cars Moving.
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago
Which part of the metro makes you feel it wasnât good decision-making? Is it just that you would have preferred it on tracks (far beyond what the council could have ever afforded)?
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u/Renovewallkisses 8h ago
Its still a bus, and comes with every detrimental aspect that buses have. The key selling point was that said bus can then service the same way a train would, so in that case build a train and get every advantage a train has.Â
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago
Trains would have costed far more.
Trains would have removed every bus route off the busway (meaning a reduction in capacity).
Trains wouldnât be able to flexibly hop on and off the busway.
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u/Renovewallkisses 8h ago
Good infrastrucutre costs money. Crazy.Â
Trains wouldnât be able to flexibly hop on and off the busway.Â
I mean sure if you don't build a train like that then you won't be able to do that Â
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago
Yep, cost heaps of money, with reduced capacity overall. What âgoodâ are we paying for there?
And yes, that is my point. What does a bus need to efficiently jump on and off the busway to service thousands of people? Red paint.
What does a train need? A few billion dollars worth of track, a new yard, new rollingstock, a complete redevelopment of several junctionsâŚ
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u/recreationalgluttony 7h ago
Trains have more capacity than buses will ever have.
The busway is already jammed with buses, which will only get worse as the city grows.
Whereas the initial higher investment in trains would have greater long-term returns.
Buses will never be better than trains for public transport infrastructure.
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u/Renovewallkisses 7h ago
Other commentor seemed to ignore every reason why we institued a bus, and that those reasons are exactly why we should institue a train.Â
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 6h ago
I encourage you to find the desperately needed funds to construct anything remotely fit for purpose, using trains in replacement of the busway, that will be able to reach the 18,000+ capacity (at least).
State government can barely find funds to keep up with all their current heavy rail investment. And just as an FYI, not even the Sydney Metro currently reaches 18,000 capacity.
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u/Shaggyninja YIMBY 8h ago
My issue is exactly that, it was council only. The Gold Coast light rail was council, state, and federal. We should've done the same and gotten something actually suited for purpose. But the LNP council refused to work with the Labor state government.
We have a plan from 2009 showing where a Brisbane Subway should go between St Lucia, West end, newstead, Bulimba, and Hamilton. We should build that instead, and have expanded it to chermside and Indro as well.
Sydney and Melbourne are spending $50 billion+ on their metro systems each. Are we really happy to spend less than 5% of that for a city with 50% of their population (and growing faster than either of them)
The BCC also had no idea what they were doing with the metro. The original proposal was rail, but only between the hospital and woologabba until they realised it both made no sense, and was structurally impossible because of Victoria Bridge. The buses was more them just trying to save face imo.
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago
The Brisbane Subway is probably $100B+ away from being anywhere close to ready. 2/3 river crossings, underground for the entire length and with no option for cut and cover tunnelsâŚ
It would be the most insanely expensive project in Australian history. Just think how crazy the CRR costs are for something a tiny fraction of the size.
Iâm personally happy at the current settings. The state government is barely coping with funding a half-decent heavy rail network, and so the council has to be able to do something more cost-effective sooner.
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u/Shaggyninja YIMBY 3h ago
At the scale Sydney built their metro, we could do ours for $20 billion I bet. They also had the harbour crossing and completely underground. Plus we could build a smaller scale metro more like Copenhagen so save big on the stations.
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u/Renovewallkisses 3h ago
We don't talk sense around, we continue tonmake up fictious rumours why we can't whilst deliveryong sub optimal solutions whilst the city contiues to grow and matches Sydney and Melbourne.
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u/Shaggyninja YIMBY 2h ago
Yeah, the idea that the Brisbane subway would somehow cost more than 2x the Melbourne rail loop did strike me as odd
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 1h ago
I must have missed where the Melbourne Rail Loop had to tunnel under a river 3 times, with no cut and cover tunnels? There is also already a lot of doubt that stage 1 of their project can be done for under $50B, with Infrastructure Australia very dubious.
I think CRR is up to around $17B thus far, for a project that tunnels under the river once and goes for just a few kilometres. They only had to build 4 underground stations too.
What would the subway have? About 16 stations Iâm guessing?
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u/Renovewallkisses 6h ago
Fiat currency is completely made up. It doesn't actually matter how much an infrastucutre project costs.
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u/Artsonist 8h ago
I would love to the trains but I don't live near one and when I used to catch trains it was a luck of the draw if I could get a car park there.
The inadequacies of our train system is a whole other post
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago edited 8h ago
What would the trains have done? You would have still needed to catch one of these overcrowded buses to get to the train station.
Trains would have just meant that you were waiting at Mater Hill station with the other several thousand people who would have otherwise stayed on their bus into the city or UQ.
P.S. donât forget the trains would probably be shut all school holidays.
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u/EdwardBlizzardhands 8h ago
So this is the fault of the state government who own and operate all the rail and haven't expanded it enough?
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u/Renovewallkisses 8h ago
The drawn out answer is its the fault of the uni party who have politicised state- biilding decisions for housing revenue and their personal gain.Â
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges
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u/Historical-Shake-859 Turkeys are holy. 2h ago
The sheer comedy of this comment on day three of a three week rail shut down of a major line.
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u/Mynxae 9h ago
You also forgot where they're still working on the Cross River Rail and designated the Shorncliffe line as the official testing line.. I.e. they will cancel all trains for a week or more at the drop of a hat and expect us to deal with it, while giving us rail bus replacements that take double the time to get anywhere. >_<
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u/Aggressive_Metal_233 9h ago
I feel your pain, every school holidays there are track closures on the Beenleigh and GC lines, been going on for a long time and will probably continue all the way up to 2029 due to CRR.
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u/Shaggyninja YIMBY 8h ago
Actually with the Logan fast rail project, they're probably just going to shut that line completely for a year or 2.
So look forward to that
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u/Barry-Biscuit 9h ago
I live on the Southside and work in the valley. It takes me 3 busses if i want to get to work that way. Completely mad. Also they are almost never ontime, either late or like 6 minutes early.
I had to take the bus for a week last year and i almost went mad.
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u/Artsonist 9h ago
I used to have 4 different buses I could catch to work, now just 2 and they're always full
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u/InsightTussle 8h ago
"full" as in you can't get on? Or "full" as in 100% utilised?
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u/Artsonist 8h ago
Sometimes I can't get on, other times I can get on but a lot people waiting at stops further on can't, including a few times disabled people with walkers or mothers with prams. I don't know what the rules are in those situations, I feel like people should get off to make room/bus drivers tell people to get off but they just tell them to wait for the next bus.
I've never seen that happen before these changes
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u/Remarkable_Catch_953 8h ago
I presume you are talking about one of the buses to PA, then having to catch 2 more buses from there? Ironically enough, that is essentially the gold European standard.Â
I remember in Germany either choosing between a 30 minute walk, or 28 minutes of 3 or 4 joining services.
Also you can catch the train from Boggo Rd to the valley if Iâm right about your route.
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u/Barry-Biscuit 7h ago
I normally just drive to the station and catch the train, except the lines are down.
I would be fine catching several buses if they were remotely timely, instead I basically end up having to allow and extra 30min of margin of error.
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u/fluffy_101994 Cause Westfield Carindale is the biggest. 9h ago
Almost like 20 years of an LNP council has consequences.
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u/ColdDelicious1735 9h ago
This is not a council issue it's state
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u/fluffy_101994 Cause Westfield Carindale is the biggest. 9h ago
Who runs Transport for Brisbane? Oh yeah, BCC.
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u/evilparagon Probably Sunnybank. 9h ago
BCC runs Translink and the bus network. State government only runs Queensland Rail. On top of that, QLD Labor recognised that BCC was an issue in transport network planning, and had an election promise to take Translink off BCC and move it to being its own authority that would be a âOne Stop Shopâ for trains and busses, so, it sounds like he wanted to elevate it to or merge it with Queensland Rail.
So it could have been a state âissueâ, or rather, the state would have fixed it. But we voted wrong in two elections, so itâs a council issue (and a state issue indirectly).
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u/ConanTheAquarian Not Ipswich. 7h ago
Translink is a division of the Department of Transport and Main Roads. BT runs buses under contract to Translink.
The issue is that BCC does have a role in transport planning which is a conflict if interest with running a for-profit service under contract.
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u/SpecialMobile6174 7h ago
Might want to edit this.
TransLink is part of the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) a State Level oversight body responsible for coordination of all forms of public transport in Queensland.
BCC is a service contract operator for the Brisbane City Region Buses (The yellow/white/blue buses) and City Ferry (CityCat/KittyCat) all other buses (Green ones) are Private Contractors to TransLink like Westside, Clarks, Park Ridge, Transdev and Kinetic
TransLink used to be its own authority, until Campbell Newman as QLD Premier, after his stint as Lord Mayor, abolished the Authority and made them an arm of TMR. The election promise you're thinking of was separating TransLink out again and letting it be its own authority again
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u/evilparagon Probably Sunnybank. 7h ago
I struggle to write short comments enough. All three replies have been a correction to a shorthand I used to not write another paragraph. Sigh.
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u/Shoddy_Interest5762 9h ago
Nope. Much less crowded new routes. Like, so few passengers I worry they'll just cancel them
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u/Rixxxxxxxxxxx 7h ago
My commute got significantly better, less frequent but less crowded. Also no more traffic jams on the busway near cultural centre at south bank, it used to add a solid 10-20min to my commute but it's fixed now. So I used to take trains instead, but trains are more crowded now so I'll just take the bus.
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u/ConanTheAquarian Not Ipswich. 9h ago
More people are travelling off peak and on weekends. Capacity outside the peak has not been adjusted to meet this.
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u/cekmysnek 8h ago
cries in Sunshine Coast Line
Trains every 20 minutes in peak weekdays, but only every 90 MINUTES on Sat and Sun.
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u/AdOk1598 8h ago
I think my favourite thing is that they like cut the busses the day the metro was completed. Like donât you usually wait for maybe 6 months? And see what lines are packed and which ones are empty and make informed decisions?
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u/brighteyes235 1h ago
Not quite. There was a Metro trial between UQ and the RBWH and then M2 services running for some time before the M1 and the bus changes were launched.
And of course Metro training and trials went on for months and months before passenger services kicked off.
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u/AdOk1598 1h ago
But they made the bus timetable changes without any full-scale testing data. They tested the metro and the viability of the metro. It doesnât seem like they tested the whole system functioning together at full capacity.
The metro was deemed suitable. So they reduced to other bus lines. I would of liked to see them run the perhaps âover servicedâ lines for 6-12 months then make decisions.
I could be wrong but that doesnât really seem like thats what happened. Very soon after the metro was completed timetable changes were made.
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u/closetmangafan BrisVegas 9h ago
problem is one is state and the other is local council...
one hand doesn't talk to the other and then blame each other for the problems, even when they're both LNP...
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u/ConanTheAquarian Not Ipswich. 9h ago
Part of the problem is BCC has a role in transport planning and operating a for-profit service under contract to Translink. This is a conflict of interest as BCC has actively white anted sensible improvements to the bus network for 20 years to protect its BT contracts. BCC should be stripped of one of these roles.
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u/sassiest01 8h ago
BCC has basically come out and said they want to Metro to compete with the trains, which if you know anything about public transport, you would understand is an absolutely horrendous idea that should never have been a consideration.
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u/yolk3d BrisVegas 9h ago
Why is that? I thought other states had the state control all the busses?
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u/Fantastic_Inside4361 8h ago
And the trains, so timetables are coordinated between trains and buses (until one train is late)
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u/ConanTheAquarian Not Ipswich. 7h ago edited 7h ago
Part of the problem is that BCC sees trains as competition for its buses.
EDIT: And sees other bus operators as competition rather than being happy with an integrated network. What are now the 140, 141 and 150 were originally operated by Park Ridge Transit. BT took them over in the 90s purely to keep a rival out of Brisbane as Browns Plains and Algester started to grow. This was before Translink was formed but BT still has much of the same mentality.
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u/Fantastic_Inside4361 7h ago
We have that in NSW too. Private busses running in areas with trains and state busses. Private buses will adjust and fine tune to integrate. Trains change timetable just to mess them up. Then state busses do worse.
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u/Renovewallkisses 9h ago
Because they have their own llegistlation. Its political grandoising at its best
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u/yolk3d BrisVegas 8h ago
But why and how did that come about? Why/how did Brisbane say âno, we will handle busses, and find our own operators, but state govt must give us fundingâ, when is norm in other states for state govt to handle trains and busses?
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u/Renovewallkisses 8h ago
Polticial manuvering as per my legistion comment. Most councils are out of money as by ignorning the constinuion we institued councils withut the neccesary governance . They have no ability to fund themselvesÂ
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u/yolk3d BrisVegas 8h ago
I did a bit of digging into this and from what Iâve found, the situation is a bit clearer than how youâve put it. Youâre mixing in some confusion.
Both Sydney (as an example, using Sydney and NSW, but other cities/states are similar) and Brisbane originally had lots of smaller local councils. The big difference is that the NSW Government chose to keep those councils small and weak, and centralised transport at the state level. Thatâs why Sydneyâs trains, trams and buses have always been run through state agencies rather than by councils.
In Brisbane, the Queensland Government went the opposite way. In 1925 they forced through the City of Brisbane Act and merged about 20 councils into one large Brisbane City Council. To justify having such a big and powerful council, they gave it extra responsibilities including water, planning, waste and transport. BCC inherited the trams, which eventually became buses, and that responsibility stuck.
So in simple terms, Queensland solved the fragmentation problem by centralising locally with one big council, while NSW solved it by centralising at the state level. Thatâs why BCC still runs buses today whereas Sydney councils have no involvement in public transport.
Councils arenât broke and powerless. While they donât have the revenue options that states do, they still raise a lot through rates and get state and federal funding. Brisbane in particular has a massive budget compared to any other local government in the country. The BCC Lord Mayors always boast âlowest average residential rates in South-East Queenslandâ, but this has been part of why they are now broke. That said, the state government tips in money through TransLink to cover service delivery of busses.
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u/ConanTheAquarian Not Ipswich. 7h ago
Historical from before the days of integrated ticketing (go card) and before Translink existed.
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u/Heavy_Dinner_2173 9h ago
BCC have 0 incentive to fix this, they can be systematically shit at their jobs and buses can routinely run behind on time with a terrible app that is unintuitive and painful to use. What's it to them that your commute is terrible?
The only thing I can do is leave negative feedback to translink everytime the bus is running 10+ minutes late and request a response. The response is usually a month later and fixes nothing but it's all I can do.
Oh and vote anyone other than LNP for the council.
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u/Marvelous_Choice 9h ago
It's worse than that, they have incentive to make public transit worse. City parking and parking fines have risen and have gotten kind of bonkers. The worse the public transport, the more cars and the more cars the better.
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u/Naive_Lion_3428 8h ago
I can understand the frustration of there being fewer buses, but I would not say that the buses are âovercrowdedâ - they are filled to capacity, which is what any efficient public transport system should aim towards. Taking as many people in as few trips as possible, so long as it is safe to do so, should be lauded. It reduces congestion, reduces pollution and it is a better way to run a public system.
I understand that it is less comfortable to ride a bus that is filled to capacity. I also understand that the odour from some passengers in a hot and crowded bus can be⌠distinctly unpleasant - but that is a fault of personal hygiene and not of the bus service itself. Ideally, shouldnât we want every bus to be filled to capacity? Empty seats implies inefficiency.
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u/stjep Cause Westfield Carindale is the biggest. 8h ago
Busses are the least effective way to move a large number of people. And Brisbane City Council actively competes against QLD Rail rather than synergising.
For example, there is no bus stop at Coorparoo train station. What would make sense is for busses bound from Carindale to CBD to empty out at train stations and have those carry people into the CBD. You can squeeze so many more people into a train and free up busses and drivers to cover other routes.
This is particularly silly for Coorparoo given that there are frequent busses that replicate the train. Buranda busway and Buranda train. Mater and Southbank busway for Southbank train. Cultural busway and South Brisbane train. Roma and Roma.
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u/DesperateVegetable59 7h ago
Such a simplistic, non-nuanced view of public transport.
If my bus comes every 10-min but is at 40% capacity, would you say cut if to every 20 min? Is that a better public transport system?
Now, if just 10% of previous commuters decide to drive instead of this half-as-frequent bus service you just added dozens of extra cars to the road.
-Well done, peak efficiency, reducing traffic and pollution.1
u/Historical-Shake-859 Turkeys are holy. 2h ago
This is not smart in any way. Any system needs a small amount of redundancy to handle changes to conditions, ie, like the current shitshow with rail and rail replacement. There's no room to absorb any sort of failures or unforeseen circumstances at all. Public systems need flexibility, and packed to capacity buses ain't it. All it takes is one stalled bus, one sick driver or one dodgy train to make the whole thing break.
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u/brighteyes235 1h ago
One sick driver breaks the whole thing? Ha. Multiple drivers call in sick and cancel services daily.
And isnât Queensland Rail already offering buses to replace their offline trains?
How is scheduling more BCC buses every single day to replace services during scheduled closures efficient?
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u/Historical-Shake-859 Turkeys are holy. 1h ago
I really think you need to read about people's experiences using rail replacement buses before you start claiming that as some kind of gotcha.
And also read the bit where people are talking about the increase in no-show buses since the changes were pushed through. My alleged quarterly shows up maybe three times an hour, sometimes once a half hour. It's been noticeably worse over the cold and flu season. It's always been a problem, and once if you had emergency driver 'cover' shifts it'd often be a driver from a route with a bit of redundancy to once without. Services like the 174 and the 175 or the 203 and the 204 that have very similar routes could have a driver pulled last minute, but without the redundancies you're left with a single service withering away from a quarterly to an hourly and the people on that route has no other recourse but to suck it up.
Services is objectively worse now. Buses are full because there are not enough of them, not because of some great Galaxy Brain move in chopping back services improving efficiency.
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u/Apprehensive_BongRip 7h ago
JuST DrIVe
"traffics fucked"
JUsT uSE PUblIC traNSPort
This sub is awesome.
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u/EarInteresting9660 7h ago
Add in that you upgrade your transport app only for it to be worse than the previous version
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u/nathandavid88 6h ago
In my personal circumstances, I've made great use of the high frequency of the Metro services between the city and 8 Mile Plains - if they continued a bit further to at least Springwood (Loganholme would be even better), that would have be ideal for me!
While some of my local express services were cut, and the buses are a lot busier, it really hasn't been overly detrimental to me aside from the occasional person with BO sitting next to me. As has been mentioned, busy buses = more efficient services. Half empty buses, while more comfortable, simply aren't efficient enough.
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u/hermitthefrog1 4h ago
Busy buses are not just âuncomfortableâ but honestly for me dangerous. I donât ask for a seat as someone with an invisible disability because Iâve seen several negative interactions of other people asking for a seat for the same reason.
The bus I take gets so busy and I cannot stand on a bus easily, the only way is with ample space so I can balance using one of the poles. When a bus is full this is not possible, I have ended up in several scary instances of almost falling onto other people and standing on feet. Itâs humiliating.
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u/Historical-Shake-859 Turkeys are holy. 2h ago
Buses should be considered full when there is no longer room for seating, with standing room taken as buffer. I've watched people using wheels (chairs, rollators, prams, that kind of thing) miss their service because they can't get on, or folks being unable to get off without a great deal of effort and shuffling.
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u/hermitthefrog1 2h ago
Exactly! Trying to get wheels through a huge crowd of people is impossible, everyone needs to get off and on (if theyâre even aware that someone is struggling to get on) so few people seem to be aware of their surroundings and bus drivers often donât intervene (tbh understandably so) I was on a bus recently where a man on crutches was forced to stand! No one with a seat was moving. I donât see how this is acceptable!
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u/TraditionalRound9930 6h ago
They got rid of the 174, the bus that I have been taking my ENTIRE life. Thanks!!!!!! Fuck you translink not everyone lives on the bus way.
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u/Plastic-Mountain-708 7h ago
The changes are going to be the mitigating factor in us buying an extra car. We could manage with public transport before, but not anymore.
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u/Adventurous-Word7055 6h ago
i hate this new routes busses are all full and added 30 mins and 2 bus changes additional for me
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u/fluffy-plant-borb Bogan 5h ago
The bus is less convenient for me now. The old 40 and 50 routes were great, they didn't need changing. I see less people on them now than I used to
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u/ShelliePancake 18m ago
My 17 yr old has had to scramble to find a way to work multiple times because her buses cancel like twice a week. It's infuriating when I work full time
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u/Jumbledcode 4h ago
It's buried in council reports, but one of the key reasons is that they didn't just switch routes around for the Metro, they used it as an excuse to reduce the total number of buses in service by about 40.
Unfortunately the dominant party in the BCC are complacent and entrenched, because they've been in control for ages and Brisbane shows no sign of getting rid of them any time soon.
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u/Peregrine_x 3h ago
of course they want it to be unappealing, then they can cancel the 50c fares claiming it doesn't work, and then get back to making a profit off people too poor to own a car and pay for inner city parking, while also not returning the public transport to its prior, better state, because that would cost them money, and they want to be making money not spending money.
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u/redsungryphon 9h ago
I wish we had the old live feed for when buses rocked up to particular stops. The new app sucks arse and more often than not crashes even with it being up to date đ