The Brisbane city council has now released its planned changes to the Brisbane Transport bus network. You may recall that after the outcry over the proposed Translink bus changes the city council took over responsibility for redesigning the bus routes that it ran.
Reading the BCC's proposed changes it seems to me that the city council has thrown the baby out with the bath water. If Translink could be accused of doing too much (i.e. making dumb changes like cancelling the heavily used 444) the city council appears to be doing too little to fix what is quite an inefficient network.
For example: good changes to the bus network proposed by Translink, like a well overdue high frequency buz service to the Centenary suburbs, and some attempt to clean up the spaghetti of low frequency bus routes between Centenary suburbs and the city appear to all have been canned.
Locally, the combination of the low frequency 414 (Indoroopilly to UQ) and 417 (Long Pocket to City) buses into a circular St Lucia local route, (which seemed like a good idea to me) is also canned.
Why does this matter? Well the main benefit of the Translink plan would have been more high frequency bus routes servicing more people, with the cost of these extra buses offset by having a more cost effective bus network. My understanding is that the council's changes aren't allowed to increase the cost of the bus network. So, because they are removing very few duplicated and inefficient routes my guess is that they are unable to add lots of new high frequency routes.
Anyway you can review the city council's proposed changes here, which also contains instructions on how to have your say.
I am really concerned about the cancellation of the 435 past Brookfield to Upper Brookfield. I have filed 2 submissions now, but I think it was a foregone conclusion. We have no alternative transport. I don't believe that the BCC's solution of a PPT will handle the need. We have a lot of young families, whose children are getting older, and will soon need to take a bus to high school. There are growing numbers of elderly who will be completely housebound. Myself, I will be out of a job in June and my car currently needs $3000 of parts to become roadworthy again. Not going to happen. If you see me and my 2 children under 6 hitch hiking down Upper Brookfield Rd, please stop to give us a lift to the supermarket, doctor, etc.
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