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

  • May 4, 2016
    Priority boosts ridership and cuts congestion
    Transit priority is proving a win-win in Europe and Australia. David Crawford reports. Technology that integrates with the Australian-originated Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) is driving bus signal priority and performance analysis initiatives on both sides of the world; in its homeland, with a major deployment in 2015, and in the capital of the Republic of Ireland.
  • August 13, 2015
    Syracuse models post-industrial revival for US cities
    A connective corridor in Syracuse, New York State, could be a model for other post-industrial cities, as David Crawford discovers. The aim of the city of Syracuse’ 5.6km-long Connective Corridor in Onandaga County in upstate New York is to create a model ‘complete street’ for use in wider regeneration schemes. Key transport-sector components are traffic calming, high-quality transit with accessible passenger information, plus walkability and bike-friendliness.
  • February 23, 2017
    Single system simplicity for smarter city transport
    All encompassing, city-wide transport monitoring and control systems are beginning to make their way onto the market, as Colin Sowman hears. The futuristic vision of cities where everything is connected and operated with maximum efficiency by a gigantic computer remains a distant prospect but related sectors and services are beginning to coalesce: transport monitoring and control for instance.
  • July 26, 2013
    Qatar invests $70 billion to pave the way to world beating transportation
    Eng. Zeina Nazer looks at what Qatar’s recently-announced investment in transport infrastructure will mean on the ground. Qatar is experiencing a rapid economic and industrial growth. This growth is characterised by a rapid population increase and by the urgent need towards the development of both infrastructure projects and major transport projects. In order to handle this rate of development within Qatar, Public Works Authority (Ashghal) is developing a fully-integrated multimodal transportation system in