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?

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.

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?

While Brisbane may not compare to the infamous Sydney gridlock, peak hour is getting worse.

Frustrated motorists on Brisbane's busiest roads are facing peak-hour journeys with average speeds dropping below 20km/h.

Full buses are driving past key stops as students and professionals vie for space on popular routes.

Brisbane Metro was one of just six projects in Australia deemed "high priority" by the independent body Infrastructure Australia in 2018.

The Brisbane Metro will help to alleviate the strained public transport system, says traffic engineering expert Associate Professor Jonathan Bunker from Queensland's University of Technology.

"The busway is at capacity basically. The Cultural Centre is the bottleneck and they can’t push many more buses through there during peak times," he says.

"The big picture is to make better use of the busways. The main ways Brisbane Metro is intending to do that is by fixing up infrastructure problems on both sides of Victoria Bridge.

"Most people who know Brisbane can picture all of those buses queued along the Victoria Bridge. Putting the station and tunnel underground will improve that."

What new and improved infrastructure will the project bring?

Brisbane Metro may run on existing busways, but the council has promised a series of infrastructure updates it says will halve travel times.

BCC has committed $644 million and the federal government $300 million, to fund the $944 million project.

The Victoria Bridge will eventually be closed to cars and converted to a green bridge but the council is yet to set a date for that.

A 200-metre bus tunnel will be built under Adelaide Street to "declutter" the thoroughfare. Cr Schrinner says there will be 50 fewer buses in peak hour on Adelaide Street as they go underground.

A new depot will be built at Rochedale to house the metro fleet, after the council resumed the land of four private properties on School Road.

What happens if Labor wins?

On March 28, Brisbane residents will vote for the city's lord mayor.

Labor hopeful and former television reporter Patrick Condren says if elected he will "seriously review the future of the Metro project".

"It's already several million dollars over budget, which is absolutely extraordinary, and (in) these difficult financial times, can the residents and ratepayers of Brisbane afford this sort of overrun?" he said in January.

Mr Condren has said light rail would be better for the city.

The council's LNP administration has been at loggerheads with the Labor state government over the project for years.

Plans ground to a halt in mid-2019 when the two governments fought about where the new underground station would be built in South Brisbane.

The council originally wanted to build the station below the Cultural Centre, but the state government was not keen on that idea.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey sent the council back to the drawing board and said the station must be relocated to under the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Cr Schrinner accused the government of digging in its heels, not giving approvals and trying to weaken the council's LNP administration ahead of the March council election.

After months of delays, Cr Schrinner announced this month that the station would be built at the Cultural Centre with a few "tweaks".

"Those tweaks would potentially involve another (underground) portal for buses from West End to get into the Metro station," he said.