Skip to main content

Brisbane plans underground bus loop

Plans for an underground bus loop in Brisbane’s central business district (CBD) have been released at an estimated cost of US$2 billion, as the pre-feasibility report for the project has been completed. The bus loop, part of Brisbane council’s pre-feasibility study into the Suburbs 2 City Buslink project, is intended to reduce traffic congestion and bus travel times by connecting existing bus stations with new stations underground.
September 23, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Plans for an underground bus loop in Brisbane’s central business district (CBD) have been released at an estimated cost of US$2 billion, as the pre-feasibility report for the project has been completed.

The bus loop, part of Brisbane council’s pre-feasibility study into the Suburbs 2 City Buslink project, is  intended to reduce traffic congestion and bus travel times by connecting existing bus stations with new stations underground.

Announcing the plans, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, said: “A one-way, underground bus loop would take buses off city streets, give drivers a simple, congestion-free run around this end of the CBD and open up opportunities for new bus infrastructure like layover bays,” says Quirk.

“The CBD and adjacent suburbs will need to accommodate an additional 130,000 workers in the next 20 years and we need to improve public transport capacity to accommodate this growth by improving the network to reduce travel times.”

Quirk says the recent announcement the Queensland Government is investigating a Brisbane underground combined rail and bus tunnel was a tremendous opportunity to address the major congestion problems that face the city’s public transport systems.

Related Content

  • December 22, 2015
    Jeddah juggles transport needs of residents, pilgrims and tourists
    Mass pilgrimages, new tourists and a growing population lead Jeddah to seek some smart transport solutions as David Crawford finds out. Rationalising traffic movement and public transport in a major Middle Eastern business and tourist centre that is also a gateway for millions of religious pilgrims every year is the challenge for the 20-year Jeddah Strategic Plan and the Jeddah Public Transport Programme (JPTP) it spawned. The latter is costed at US$8bn.
  • January 20, 2012
    Home based real time travel information drives reduction in car use
    David Crawford investigates a new approach to discouraging car use - the 'kitchen as travel centre'. ITS technology working together with UK planning legislation is driving an innovative 'kitchen as travel centre' approach to home design which is boosting public transport as an alternative to car use. The combination is already proving powerful enough to assuage environmentalist opposition to major urban developments. It is also being seen as a way of delivering wider social and community benefits inside an
  • April 26, 2013
    Compass4D second meeting examines Danish ITS bus project
    Following its successful first meeting in Spain earlier this year, the Compass4D consortium met for the second time in Copenhagen to plan forthcoming work and to participate in a joint workshop with ITS Denmark on ITS deployment best practices. The Copenhagen pilot site is important to the project as the city will deploy cooperative systems on at least ninety buses and at twenty-one traffic signals. The route chosen for the pilot site is a central bus route running between Copenhagen Central Station and the
  • March 17, 2016
    Moscow planning improvements to city’s ITS system
    Buoyed by the success of its recent ITS introductions, the authorities in Moscow are planning additions to the system as Eugene Gerden discovered. The government of Russia’s capital, Moscow, plans further improvement to the city’s transport systems, partly through the introduction of new ITS technologies and the modernisation of existing systems. At the beginning of 2015 the Moscow government completed the introduction of a new ITS infrastructure in the city, which, according to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin