Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size If there is one thing politicians love, it is announcing major road and transport projects that they know will strike a chord with frustrated motorists sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic and commuters crammed in packed public transport. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised Brisbane "congestion-busting" commuter car parks at two Logan train stations and intersection upgrades. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk assures her government's Cross River Rail is a done deal. And lord mayor Adrian Schrinner vows to bring us Brisbane Metro - if he is elected on March 28. So what exactly is it? How will it make our lives easier? And will it actually happen? Brisbane Metro route map. Credit:Brisbane City Council


What is the Brisbane Metro? The almost $1 billion Brisbane Metro project will take hundreds of the council's yellow-and-blue buses off the road and replace them with mega-buses. The aim is to better link the suburbs and city with bigger and more frequent services. More buses will move into underground tunnels to ease peak-hour gridlocks. Sixty new electric buses - each with a capacity of 150 people - will run across 21 kilometres of existing busway every three minutes during peak hour. They will be 24 metres long and split into three carriages. The buses will run around the clock on weekends and for at least 20 hours on weekdays.


The new Metro will be split into two parts and include 18 stations and 11 interchanges. One route will run from Eight Mile Plains, on the southern outskirts of metropolitan, Brisbane to Roma Street in the CBD. The other route will link the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in the inner-north to the University of Queensland St Lucia campus. How is it different from Cross River Rail? While the Metro is separate to the state government's Cross River Rail project, the two will share interchanges at Boggo Road and Roma Street. The Cross River Rail will be a 10.2-kilometre rail line from Dutton Park to Bowen Hills, which includes 5.9 kilometres of tunnel under the Brisbane River and CBD. Brisbane Metro services are expected to start running by the end of 2023, a year before Cross River Rail.


Why are they calling it a "Metro" if it is a big bus? Both Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries tell us a metro is an underground railway system but the Brisbane Metro is essentially a fancy banana bus – one that bends as it navigates corners – and lord mayor Adrian Schrinner refuses to use the b-word. Three-and-a-half years ago, then-lord mayor Graham Quirk announced a $1.54 billion high-frequency subway that would be "rubber-tyred" and run on tracks. The original transport proposal came during the 2016 council election and drew criticism from the Labor state government for competing with Cross River Rail. A year later the LNP council admitted it would be looking at a "high-capacity bus" instead. Cr Schrinner thinks it doesn't really matter what you call it. "I think there's often discussion of what type of vehicle is it. Is it a bus? Is it a tram? Is it a train? I don't think that's important. I think moving people effectively is important," he has previously said.


Swiss manufacturers Hess, with local support by Volgren in Eagle Farm, will build the fleet of electric buses. The vehicles are already operating in the French city of Nantes. Credit:Hess Hess built 20 buses, the same kind to be rolled out in Brisbane, for the French city of Nantes last year. Swiss-Swedish power company ABB's fast chargers will power the vehicles. The buses will have batteries mounted on the roofs that can be charged in 20 seconds while passengers are embarking and disembarking. It takes about five minutes to fully recharge the battery at terminal stations. The pilot vehicle is expected to be ready for testing in Brisbane this year. Do we actually need Brisbane Metro?

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