Brisbane Mayor Adrian Schrinner urges Premier Palaszczuk to prioritise public transport plan

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has demanded that the Palaszczuk Government get serious about building Brisbane’s busway network that would mirror much of the tramway system ripped out 50 years ago.

LORD Mayor Adrian Schrinner has demanded that the Palaszczuk Government get serious about building Brisbane’s busway network that would mirror much of the tramway system ripped out 50 years ago.

Cr Schrinner, who recently replaced Graham Quirk, said Brisbane and the surrounding regions were growing fast, but the State Government had no long-term public transport infrastructure plan.

“The State Government first highlighted the need for a 75km network of busways in 1997, however, more than 20 years later only one-third of this busway network has been constructed,” Cr Schrinner told The Courier-Mail.

50 years after Brisbane’s trams were scrapped, it’s not too late to fix this this epic planning fail

Nostalgic tour to mark 50th anniversary of the last running of Brisbane’s trams on the northside

The Southeast Busway, from the city to Springwood, which was engineered to be retrofitted for light rail, has been a runaway success since it opened in the early-2000s, going on to become the highest-frequency segregated busway route in the world.

However, the Eastern Busway to Capalaba and the Northern Busway to Bracken Ridge have been stalled for a decade after the inner-city stretches of both were completed. Both busways would service routes prone to peak-hour gridlock that won’t ­benefit from the Palaszczuk Government’s $5.4 billion Cross River Rail.

Former transport minister Paul Lucas, who now chairs the CRR authority, described the Eastern Busway as a necessity in 2006.

However, nothing has been done since progress stalled at Coorparoo in 2011, with the Palaszczuk Government looking at stopgap solutions such as bus lanes and intersection upgrades.

The Southeast Busway, from the city to Springwood, which was engineered to be retrofitted for light rail, has been a runaway success since it opened in the early-2000s. Picture: Patria Jannides

The Department of Transport and Main Roads website states that the routes of both busways were “currently being revised” and further construction was “subject to funding and government priorities”.

Brisbane’s prodigious tramway network went north to Chermside and east to Belmont before being shut down in 1969.

Council’s Brisbane Metro system, which includes a fleet of 25m-long vehicles, will use the existing busway network from 2023.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey confirmed that no ­timetable existed to complete the busway and it would take a partnership across all three levels of government to build them.