With funding delays and designs unfinished, Brisbane Metro is going nowhere

BRISBANE Metro is going nowhere fast and no amount of glossy brochures will be able to cover up the holes in a flawed design and planning process, writes Jared Cassidy.

• Lord Mayor: next election will be my last

GRAHAM Quirk’s Brisbane Metro has been a shambles since it was cobbled together one weekend in January 2016 in a panicked response to Labor’s plan for modern light rail.

The Lord Mayor boldly declared it would be the first of its kind in Australia. Labor presciently described the project as nothing more than a few fancy buses.

And more than two years on, Cr Quirk still doesn’t even know what sort of bus that will be.

Even following the election campaign, the Quirk administration wallpapered Brisbane with glossy brochures touting the “Brisbane Metro Subway System”.

It used photos of passengers standing on underground train stations as fast trains zoomed past.

It even included a map of Brisbane’s new “subway”.

Plans for the Metro have changed several time since it was first announced two years ago, but it still received infrastructure funding.

Even this early in the piece, the Lord Mayor must have known he would have to come clean with Brisbane eventually. He knew this project would fundamentally change once it was scrutinised through a business case process, yet he laboured on.

Six months later, during Budget debate, he persevered. “The Brisbane Metro is not a bus — it runs on tracks just like the Paris Metro,” he said.

Deputy Mayor Adrian Schrinner doubled down four months later to reaffirm the Brisbane Metro would be an underground rail system: “Well, it is a metro, just like the London Underground is a metro and the Tokyo Metro is a metro.”

So Brisbane was to get a subway like the 400km-long London Underground and the 300km Tokyo Metro.

Fast forward just a few months from those unequivocal comments and the project was reborn into a busway extension with some bendy buses — just as Labor had predicted.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk (R) and Deputy Mayor Adrian Schrinner welcoming the Federal Government commitment for $300 million to the Brisbane Metro. Pic Mark Cranitch.

A business case was released slashing the cost from $1.54 billion to $944 million and showing the project would rely on the sort of vehicle popularly known by punters as banana buses. Major works include just a relocation of the Cultural Centre bus stop plus two short underground portals either side of the river connecting to the busway.

An options analysis of many different versions and vehicles was done but has been kept secret.

The Lord Mayor continues to hail this project as “transformative”.

Despite the spin Brisbane residents are bombarded with through their letterboxes, it will be nothing of the sort.

Unlike the promised subway, this project will increase the capacity of the busway by only a few thousand passengers.

It doesn’t add any new routes.

In fact, unless you live in a narrow corridor between Eight Mile Plains and the RBH busway, all it will do for you is jack up your rates.

An artist’s impression of a remodelled Cultural Centre at South Bank.

I believe to get the capacity they have been quoting there will need to be a dramatic reduction in the number of seats to accommodate more standing room.

This will be fine for short distances but may be a struggle getting people from Eight Mile Plains to the City.

It’s extraordinary that at this point, more than two years since this project was announced, we don’t yet have even an indicative design for the bus they will be using. The whole project clearly hangs on the vehicle.

For Cr Schrinner to say the model will be a one-off design based on an artist’s impression is perhaps the worst transport planning imaginable.

Brisbane City Council’s Opposition Public and Active Transport spokesman Jared Cassidy.

Yet inexplicably the Federal Government’s latest Budget includes buckets of your money for this back-of-the-envelope schmozzle while ignoring Cross River Rail.

Awarding $300 million to a project that does not even have a reference design for its bus is the biggest bastardisation of Infrastructure Australia we have ever seen.

However, the devil is always in the detail, with the Federal Budget papers revealing that only $170 million of that funding will be available over the next four years.

The council’s own capital contribution has been delayed by two years, the much vaunted Federal funding is on a drip feed and no State Government approvals have been given.

Brisbane Metro is stuck in the slow lane and no amount of glossy brochures will be able to cover for Cr Quirk.

Cr Jared Cassidy (Deagon) is Brisbane City Council’s Opposition Public and Active Transport spokesman.