The car-free Brisbane bridges now busier than anyone expected

Brisbane’s car-free bridges are far more popular than anyone expected.

With so many people are taking to the bridges, footpaths and bikeways, police officers are now fining scooter and bike riders for speeding and not wearing helmets.

There have been 315,390 walking and riding trips across Brisbane’s newest bridge, the Kangaroo Point Bridge, since it opened on December 15 – an average of 10,876 per day.

Since mid-December, 260,031 pedestrian, 36,166 cycling and 19,193 e-scooter trips have been made across the Kangaroo Point Bridge.Credit: Courtney Kruk

While the numbers may be inflated by initial curiosity, the patronage has already blown the business case forecast – of 6100 daily trips by 2036 – out of the water.

The Kangaroo Point Bridge was initially forecast to take 84,000 car trips off the road every year, but council now says this prediction is “shaping up to be overly conservative”.

The Breakfast Creek Bridge had 2616 daily walking, cycling and scooter trips, on average, since it opened in February 2024. It was expected to get 1500 daily trips by 2031.

“Both of the new bridges we built in 2024 have blown their initial estimates out of the water and that means fewer car trips on the road network,” Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said.

While there are no counters on the Neville Bonner Bridge, a pedestrian-only connection between South Bank and Queen’s Wharf that opened in August 2024, the Destination Brisbane Consortium is confident it has exceeded the projected 10,000 crossings a day.

In the same week as the bridge data was being compiled, Queensland Police ran an operation targeting e-scooters and bikes over speeding and helmet laws, at the Goodwill Bridge, Kurilpa Bridge, Victoria Bridge, Kangaroo Point Bridge, Howard Smith Wharves, New Farm Riverwalk and the Bicentennial Bikeway.

Officers issued 52 fines to 50 people, including a 24-year-old Brisbane man given two fines within 15 minutes for allegedly not wearing a helmet.

Police allege officers on the Bicentennial Bikeway first noticed the man not wearing a helmet while riding an e-scooter at 7.10am and gave him a $161 fine.

At 7.22am, officers at the Goodwill Bridge allege they noticed the man again riding an e-scooter without a secured helmet, and he was given another $161 fine.

Brisbane City Sergeant Michelle Clarke said there were too many serious crashes in 2024.

“Police frequently respond to e-scooter involved crashes where riders required treatment for serious injuries,” she said.

“It’s important to remember that these devices, particularly when travelling at speed, are not toys and can significantly harm pedestrians and riders.”

The construction of no-car bridges in Brisbane has not been without controversy, with a councillor previously calling for the Eleanor Schonell Bridge between St Lucia and Dutton Park to be opened to private vehicles.

It was Australia’s first pedestrian, cycle and bus bridge when it opened in 2006, and now accommodates more than 3100 active transport trips daily, on average, in addition to improving public transport to The University of Queensland.

Researchers found the percentage of students and staff arriving on campus by car plunged after the bridge was built and active travel surged.

There was outrage from some sectors of the community when plans to close the Victoria Bridge to cars in 2021 were first announced, in a move to improve bus travel times into the city and make way for the Brisbane Metro, and initially led to drivers using other bridges, such as the William Jolly.

The Victoria Bridge is now Brisbane’s busiest no-car bridge for active transport and caters to more than 10,000 walkers, 430 cyclists and 547 e-scooter riders daily, on average.

Not all bridges are exceeding expectations.

The Kurilpa Bridge, which opened in 2009, was expected to pave the way for 50,000 people to walk and cycle between the CBD and South Bank each week – or 7143 per day.

A decade-and-a-half later, the bridge – a good link to West End, but also a connection to an awkward 10km/h tourist zone shared with cyclists, e-scooter users and pedestrians through South Bank – gets about 3544 trips per day.

Despite promising five green bridges in 2019, council axed plans for a St Lucia to West End bridge, blaming rising costs.

A pre-feasibility report prepared in 2018 suggested a St Lucia to West End bridge could have up to 1000 walking and cycling trips a day in its first years of operation, or up to 2000 trips if it included buses.

The Toowong to West End bridge is the last on council’s agenda, and Schrinner has asked for federal funding for a business case.

But is unlikely to silence calls for more bridges to simplify travel across the Brisbane River, with its meandering shape creating isolated peninsulas across the city, with people forced onto limited roads leading in and out of dense suburbs.

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