Australia's Most Under-appreciated Rail System? | Brisbane's Transit Explained

this video is sponsored by nebula the educational streaming service created by me and my Creator Friends check out the link in the description or stay tuned to learn more Brisbane is one of the most stunning cities in the world with its Grand parks waterfronts and Skyline and as the host of a surprisingly large Rail and bus Network and the 2032 Olympic Games it's high time we explained the transit in this tropical Metropolis which has elements in common with its Australian sister cities of Perth Melbourne and Sydney so let's take a look into brisbane's surprisingly comprehensive public transport system [Music] Brisbane is the capital of the Australian state of Queensland and the center of the southeast Queensland region with over two and a half million residents that stretch it to the North and South the city is built around the winding Brisbane River and has a warm tropical climate I can also remember seeing tons of bats when I visited the city last something which I can't ever recall seeing in Canada so yeah neat Brisbane Central business district or CBD is squeezed into one of the river's bends about 15 kilometers in land and is flanked by the botanic gardens and the city's main rail Corridor to the West at the very center are the lovely pedestrianized areas on Queen and Albert streets across the river to the southeast is the Gaba a quick ground and major event center in the city which is located in the willangaba area while to the Southwest is the Brisbane convention center and the very cool streets Beach which is an artificial beach in the middle of the city to the west of the center is suncorp Stadium which hosts soccer and rugby games and will be the main stadium for the 2032 Olympic games which will be hosted by the Brisbane region in order to handle that major International Event brisbane's airport which is 13 kilometers Northeast of the CBD will be expanded with a new terminal north of its existing two and between its two runways now I mentioned it's the Brisbane region that's hosting the Olympics because the City of Gold Coast which is actually one of Australia's largest cities and just 70 kilometers southeast of Brisbane is also hosting a number of events this city is remarkable with its high-rise Skyline including the tallest building in Australia not far from tens of kilometers of pristine surfing beaches there's even an area called Surfers Paradise all of this as well as the smattering of malls and theme parks have made the area a major tourism destination heading back to Central Brisbane we have its two main train stations which both serve through trains Central which is topped by high rises and thus almost entirely underground and serves the main part of the CBD and Roma Street which serves all services which call it central as well as Intercity trains to New South Wales and Regional Queensland of course the vast majority of services through Roma's region Central are from Queensland rail which runs the state rail network and the Suburban City train Network which will be the focus of this video the entire Queensland rail network is built on 1067 millimeter Narrow Gauge tracks and the entire city train network is electrified with 25 kilovolt AC overhead wires which actually extend hundreds of kilometers North beyond the end of frequent passenger service in this way Brisbane reminds me a lot of Perth which has a network much like brisbane's that was electrified later than other major Australian cities thus the AC electrification the city train Network really is no slouch it's hundreds of kilometers long and has over 150 stations along its various lines which mostly trace the Brisbane region from north to south the grand scale of this network means there's a ton of variety across it like other Australian cities such as Sydney from Urban corridors to ones traveling through rural areas and much like Melbourne the network features a lot of great Crossings even on sections with four tracks there are also a lot of Park and rides in outer Suburban areas and freight services which share numerous corridors with passenger trains so let's dive into more detail on the Network's individual lines the central Stations of the Queensland City train Network are Roma Street and Central Station in central Brisbane Central has three Island platforms while Roma Street has three Island platforms and three side platforms and because trains from New South Wales serve Roma Street some tracks are equipped with dual gauge both stations are connected together with four tracks traveling through tunnels and there are four tracks extending pretty far to the north and south of central Brisbane as well however these are seriously impeded in their capacity by the throats of Roma Street station that is the tracks approaching it from either side which in a sign of things to come have a ton of flat Junctions south of Roma Street the tracks divide into two quarters one of these heads East cutting across the tracks approaching the station to the two-track Maryvale bridge over the Brisbane River and then expanding into three tracks to serve the city's South Bank area with several stations this quarter continues on to split into two branches again with a flat Junction with the first double track and then single track with passing loops Cleveland line heading east and the bean land gold Coastline heading south with triple track to the north and double track to the end of the line the triple track allows inter-urban Services headed to Gold Coast which are similar to New South Wales train length services in Sydney to bypass most stops until being light were frequent Suburban service ends the other Corridor heading south of Roma Street to the Southwest heads to the Springfield and Rosewood and Ipswich lines which share a quad track trunk for much of their length before splitting with a flying Junction and continuing to their Termini with Rosewood to the southwest and Springfield to the South as double track lines interestingly despite sharing a quad tracked Corridor for most of their length all services on the shared Corridor make all stops now when you look at the network to the north of Roma Street in central it appears at first like there are tons of branches compared to the South and while there are it's not quite so simple that's because the Doom Ben line which has just four stops and is entirely single track with passing loops and the airport line which is longer with basically its entire 8 kilometer length on a single track Viaduct before serving two stations several kilometers apart at the international and domestic airport terminals really don't serve all that many trains per hour just two on the doomed line and up to four on the airport line interestingly like in Sydney the airport line is run by a private company and services on it take about 20 minutes to get to the city center all of this means that like to the South there are really four main lines heading north from Central Brisbane funneling into a quad track Corridor with two funneling into each track pair and one set of those two sharing capacity with the airport and doom Bend line the first line to split off just north of central Brisbane add with a flyover from the Eastern pair of tracks is the fern in groveline which is all double track and travels to the northwest of the city center following North along the quad track trunk after passing Eagle Junction Station the Doom bin and Airport line split off one after another from the Eastern track pair with flat Junctions the doom and line heading east and Southeast and the airport line heading east and north just a little further north the shorncliff line which is all double tracked except for the last leg into schorncliffe station splits off the trunk with a flat Junction but in this case things are mostly fine because the corridor shortly thereafter Narrows to three tracks and trains headed north use the Western two tracks on the quad track trunk as it turns out the northern quad track trunk does see local and express services with the shorncliff airport and doom bin lines stopping at intermediate stations which services that travel further north do not those Services would be the ones traveling to the redcliffe peninsula line which splits off the now triple track trunk after a short section of quad tracks south of Petrie station which has two widely spaced Island platforms which set up wide curves and a flyover to the station's North which is a really good place to watch trains the Red Cliff Peninsula line like the also new Springfield line is all double tracked and grade separated and serves a ton of parking and new Suburban development on the peninsula after which it was given its name there is one more line which continues beyond the Red Cliff Peninsula line which similarly to the bean land gold coastlines makes few stops on sections of track shared with its shorter distance cousin and forms an inter-urban service to the north and that is the caboolture and sunshine Coastline which travels 150 kilometers north of central Brisbane with double track to caboolture and single track with passing Loops Beyond this line does serve the Sunshine Coast which is one of the areas that's also hosting the Brisbane 2032 games but as with the gold Coastline it travels Inland not necessarily directly serving the main population centers now I've already mentioned the Narrow Gauge that brisbane's Railway system uses but did you know that Australia widely uses three different rail gauges on all kinds of different systems from metros to Regional Rail to trams if you want to learn more about why the country came to the current state of a mess of rail gauges that it is I have an exclusive video on nebula on this right now nebula is the screaming platform owned by me and my Creator friends featuring over 14 000 titles that you can watch ad free including exclusive and Early Access videos from urbanist educational creators like myself City nerd City beautiful and not just bikes I've recently been checking out all of the nebula plus content from my fellow urbanist Channel City beautiful and this episode on whether jaywalking should be legal really piqued my interest as someone who lives in a big city and has to make decisions like whether to jaywalk of course every day in my daily life and you can watch many more bonus videos just like this one all available on nebula right now this is one of the best ways you can support my channel and my content as a whole and right now for the month of September you'll have access to Lifetime memberships for only three hundred dollars to get access to nebula as long as both nebula and you exist and even after this you'll still be able to get a great deal on yearly memberships for only two and a half dollars a month so go check out the link on screen or in the description right now to see the exclusive video now since trains can run through the city center of Brisbane services are formed by pairing lines to the north and south of the city Cleveland line trains run north to the shorncliff line and Gold Coast trains from Varsity Lakes traveled to the airport every 30 minutes with additional Services between the airport and Central areas which turn around in the city center bringing the airport up to a train every 15 minutes meanwhile bean light trains head to the Fernie Grove line while doom and line services run to the center and terminate at Roma Street finally Springfield and Rosewood line services run through the center up to the Red Cliff Peninsula and sunshine coastlines respectively now what you might notice is that there are effectively two independent sets of services those traveling to the far north and Southwest use the Western track pair through Central Brisbane while those to the Northwest Northeast East and Southeast use the other pair with far more flat Junctions and branching there is actually also one extra service which is a looping train which serves exhibition station near the main Central Queensland Rail Yard which is literally called main yard after a family whose last name was coincidentally Maine and other Central stations this service actually won't be running in the future so I'm mainly mentioning it for completion's sake while brisbane's Railway network is extensive what goes too often missed in my opinion is its impressive system of busways which are filled with elevated stations tunnels and tons of useful connections to universities hospitals and other major destinations this network is formed of four busways though they are mostly interlinked and have a ton of ramps and connection points which allow various bus routes to pop onto and off of the busways to speed up their trips around town the inner Northern busway extends from Roma Street North with tunnels and even an elevated section running a total of around seven kilometers to the south end of the northern busway a tunnel through Brisbane CBD with two stations at Queen Street and King George Square connects it with the Southeastern busway both underground stations have screen doors for safety and comfort primarily to reduce exposure to diesel fumes the Southeastern busway is a roughly 15 kilometer route heading naturally Southeast from Brisbane CBD crossing the Brisbane River on the Victoria Bridge and connecting to the Southeastern Rail lines at Southbank station from here the route heads East with a branch to the Gaba before continuing Southeast to connect to buranda station and then traveling along the Pacific Highway the last bus way in the system is the five kilometer Eastern busway which is more like an East-West orbital route across Southern Brisbane the route starts in the west with a stop at the University of Queensland before cutting East with a number of bridges and tunnels to the Southeastern busway which it runs along for a short while before branching East once again and running through a few more stations the bridge connecting the busway to the University of Queensland is incredibly impressive because the busway is the only thing that uses it besides a pedestrian and cycling path as it turns out there is a fourth busway which is a shorter stretch separated from the rest of the network that extends from the inner Northern busway that I mentioned earlier and that would be the northern busway which features tunnels two stations and one busway stop busway stops online stations have fewer facilities and are usually skipped by most services at the Northern end of the busway major roadworks along gimpy Road are adding bus lanes to effectively extend the route further the busway network is already quite large and it manages to serve a ton of routes but it's set to get even more interesting as I'm going to discuss a little later now while I won't go into great detail on them as you might imagine Beyond just buses and trains brisbane's Riverside location means it's also served by a number of Ferry routes with over 20 fairies mostly of the catamaran variety serving the city but there's also trams sort of as it turns out Gold Coast is served by the really nice and attractive g-link service which opened in 2014 and has big seven segment flexity 2 trams with space for surfboards and a 20 kilometer route with 19 stops and surprisingly surprise service there's something that just feels so cool and unique about a tram which serves a tropical environment like this better yet in the second phase of the project the line was extended to the gold Coastline at helensvale meaning that you can ride from the center of Brisbane to some of the best beaches in the world all on Rails there are also a number of Park and rides out near the highways which helps keep cars out of the denser areas near the beaches and the route connects to a ton of major destinations from hospitals to universities and malls even cooler it runs 24 hours on the weekend with a tram every 30 minutes something I wish we saw far are far more widely what's also about all of these various transit services is that they all use the integrated go card from cubic allowing you to ride trains trams buses and ferries with a single card and recently with the rollout of smart ticketing you can pay with your phone or bank card instead of needing a go-kart in the first place a feature that every city could use to reduce the barriers that exist using Transit well all of this is great and Brisbane has a surprisingly comprehensive transit system for a city of its size in the English-speaking world the big expansion plans for the city and region have got me even more excited for one g-link is being extended South with eight new stops over six kilometers of track in the next few years and even better one more extension of similar length could take it to the Gold Coast Airport massively cutting the need for out-of-state tourists to ever get in a car on their trip to the coast and then there's Brisbane Metro which has a bad name that has got it in some trouble with a skeptical public but which in my opinion is super cool the original proposal for Brisbane Metro was very gadgety retrofit the bus wage with autonomous rubber tire trains but instead a much more sensible plan has been approved Brisbane has acquired a series of tram size 24 meter long bio-articulated electric buses possibly the first in the English-speaking World from legendary Swiss manufacturer has to run a high frequency electric bus service along core parts of the busway system where there aren't mixed traffic operations and like g-link the servers will operate 24 hours over weekends the buses are something really special They feature tons of space Wi-Fi USB charging beautiful wayfinding screens all door boarding and even a separate cabin for the driver and they'll be recharged by rapid charge points at the ends of roots in as little as 4 minutes along with these lovely new vehicles the best ways are getting a bunch of upgrades including enhanced stations a conversion of the City Center Victoria Bridge to exclusive use by buses pedestrians and cyclists and a new section of tunnel direct into the King George Square station in the CBD the network will see two Services operate one from the southeast busway to Roma Street and another from the inner Northern busway to uq lakes on the Eastern busway better yet plans call for extending the services in various directions and the low cost of expansion means it seems likely that that will actually happen and if it does Brisbane can create a big network of electric high capacity bus services across the city though I would like to see in-motion trolley charging added in the future to reduce any charging downtime and the benefits spread to the suburbs as well as a simplified location and rationalization of busway services will free up more vehicles for Suburban service now as much as I like the Ottawa O train as an idea it's hard to see brisbane's plans and not at least think what if Ottawa which was actually the inspiration for brisbane's busways had built a downtown tunnel and done what Brisbane is doing instead of converting its busway to rail the final project coming to Brisbane is even bigger because every major Australian city needs to have a massive rail expansion scheme in brisbane's case that's the creatively named Cross River Rail which is rail crossing a river cross River Rail is an 11 kilometer new rail line sort of which adds six kilometers of new Cross City Tunnel and when I say Cross City I mean it as the new tunnels cut across the CBD rather than running north south along the edge of it the project will add two new underground platforms at Park Road on the Cleveland beenleigh and gold coastlines as well as at Roma Street while adding new underground stations at willangaba and Albert Street in the center of the CBD all of these new underground stations will see new Transit oriented development built on top and they'll also have platform screen doors just like the Metro tunnel in Melbourne as part of the project a number of other stations such as exhibition and a bunch on the gold Coastline are getting big overhauls and the etcs signaling is being implemented to allow higher frequency meaning the tunnel will be exclusive to the lovely etcs compatible ngr trains which are some of my favorite out there there's also going to be various yard and infrastructure improvements and the project should be open around 2026. that being said the impact of Cross River Rail is not as positive as it could be direct service from the Gold Coast to the airport is being traded off for continuous running between the inter-urban lines which I kind of like but there's also a lot of incongruency in the plans which are meant to boost capacity on that Network that could have a lot more capacity for less money if it just implemented these same signaling upgrades as with Cross River Rail built some more quad and double track and added a bunch of flyovers of course ultimately this project is adding another track pair across the city and service will be increased so the hard part of adding capacity to the network is getting built and the new line expands service to new areas which will really benefit from it so it's hard not to like the direction of the project overall just the missed opportunities and so that's Brisbane a surprisingly solid Transit city with the Narrow Gauge AC powered and Highway Transit lines of Perth the integrated inter-urban rail Services of Sydney and a new platform screen door-equipped CBD tunnel like Melbourne oh and a Metro that isn't really like most metros perhaps Brisbane is the most Australian Transit City out there all I know is I can't wait to go back [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 145,796

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, brisbane, brisbane metro, queensland rail, queensland, australia, cross city rail

Id: iOemjHJxwRE

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023