Designs for Cross River Rail will add no capacity: Former QR infrastructure manager

A former senior manager at Queensland Rail has slammed the State Government’s Cross River Rail project, saying a design flaw would leave the network with no new capacity, and creating a “bottleneck” at a crucial point on Brisbane’s northside.

PUBLIC transport advocates are calling for an urgent review of Cross River Rail following a scathing assessment by a former Queensland Rail expert.

David Bannister, who was involved in Cross River Rail between 2010 and 2016, told media the current design for the $6 billion project would add no capacity to Brisbane’s train network.

Mr Bannister said new design documents released in June showed every train from Redcliffe and the Sunshine Coast would be forced into the Cross River Rail tunnels, creating a traffic jam of trains.

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“Immediately if all these trains are being funnelled into Cross River Rail, we can’t get the 30 trains per hour that was included in the business case,” he said.

“We’re talking about six trains per hour, or about 25 per cent of the capacity is disappeared.”

Mr Bannister said previous designs from 2017 had allowed Sunshine Coast and Redcliffe trains to split between Albion and Bowen Hills, allowing six more trains per hour through the inner city.

Mr Bannister said the main concern was for the tracks north of Exhibition Station. Picture: Cross River Rail Delivery Authority

“The original business case talked about having up to 30 trains per hour coming from the North Coast line and Kippa Ring line,” he said.

“In the most recent release of the infrastructure in June, the track layouts do not allow that to occur anymore.”

Mr Bannister slammed the design as a “bottleneck,” saying it would add no capacity to the inner city unless urgent changes were made to the tracks.

He said the defects needed to be referred to the Queensland Audit Office.

Mr Bannister worked at QR in coordinating infrastructure, including Cross River Rail, for six years before leaving to become involved in Sydney’s driverless Metro train project in 2016.

Following the bombshell interview, public transport advocate Robert Dow called for an urgent review of Cross River Rail.

“What they’ve got to do is review urgently the network operating plan,” Mr Dow said. “Change what they’re going to do, because it’s just not satisfactory.”

A Cross River Rail Delivery Authority spokesman said the design had been extensively modelled by the Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland Rail and the private sector.

“Queenslanders can have a high level of confidence that the project’s design and planning is robust because it has evolved and been improved over the past decade since the original concept was first floated,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman however seemingly ruled out any further changes to the design.

“It is very important to understand that the Coordinator General has approved the Cross River Rail project to proceed in its final design,” he said.