Daily commute in Brisbane slows to a crawl

Travel speeds on Brisbane’s busiest roads have crashed below 35km/h as the commuter crawl to work worsens, but speeds on the worst stretches are averaging a lot worse than that.

TRAVEL speeds on Brisbane’s busiest roads have crashed below 35km/h as the commuter crawl to work worsens.

The latest six-month snapshot of Brisbane’s key corridors reveals the average travel speed in the morning peak was 33km/h between July and December last year.

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The return journey was only slightly better at 36km/h in the afternoon peak, but still down from the 39km/h recorded between January and June, 2018.

Brisbane’s worst roads slow to a crawl in peak-hour traffic. Picture: Patria Jannides

The road with the slowest speed during the morning peak over the six-month period was Stanley St in Woolloongabba, with an average of just 18km/h.

Stanley St, which has a speed limit of 60km/h but also includes a 40km/h school, also recorded the worst afternoon average speed at 22km/h.

Labor’s Brisbane lord mayoral candidate Rod Harding seized on the figures, saying Brisbane was on track to be the “car park capital of Australia”.

“Fifteen years (the LNP) have been in power and their promise when they first came in was they were going to bust congestion,” he said. “But every year it gets worse.”

Brisbane City Council infrastructure chair Amanda Cooper defended the figures, insisting speeds on council-run roads had dropped by less than 1km/h over the past year.

“We are taking real action on traffic congestion to get people home quicker and safer,” she said.

“Major upgrades are currently underway on major Council corridors including Kingsford Smith Drive and Wynnum Road while over the past 12 months works were completed on Telegraph Road, Green Camp Road and the Inner City Bypass.”

The road with the best travel speed in the morning peak was the Centenary Motorway between the Logan Motorway and Ipswich Motorway, with an average speed of 89km/h.