Following a previous successful blog post analysing the latest update of the national Infrastructure Priority List I thought it might be interesting to look at other strategy documents and comment on them from a rail signalling perspective.
Queensland has just issued the 2019 update of its State Infrastructure Plan (SIP), and it looks truly impressive by now. The SIP comes in two parts. Part A is a generic Strategy document which was issued in March 2016 and has not changed since. It defines the framework for infrastructure requirements in Queensland over the next 20 years. From a public transport perspective, the main takeaway is an expected doubling of trips, requiring appropriate growth in the capacity of public transport systems.
Updated Part B Program
Part B is the juicy bit where it is outlined how the strategy will be implemented with actual projects. This is what is being updated on an annual basis, including just now for 2019. So let’s see what is in there.
The overall number looks truly impressive: an investment of $49.5 billion just over the budget forecast period of the coming four years. However, that is across all “asset classes”. The figure for Transport which is relevant for this forum is only $5.6 million or about eleven per cent of the whole cake. Not exactly overwhelming.
Transport Projects
Taking a closer look at the projects planned for transport, specifically in the rail area, the usual suspects come up.
- Cross River Rail of course, a tunnel under Brisbane’s CBD and Brisbane River connecting the railway lines from the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast which is meant to relieve the city trunk of the rail network to free up capacity margins for the other lines.
- Brisbane Metro which is not really a rail project but plans for articulated vehicles on rubber wheels guided along a dedicated corridor.
- New Generation Rollingstock which introduces new trains to the suburban fleet as an enabler of increased rail service frequencies.
- ETCS Level 2 Inner City which aims at providing more capacity to the trunk section of the suburban network and it now rolled up in the delivery of Cross River Rail.
Some upgrade of the North Coast Line, three new stations on the Gold Coast Line, several other station upgrades and service frequency increase on most of the suburban railway lines round off the package.
Summing up
What can I say? Sorry, but I’m not blown away by this. As I write this I wonder what I was expecting. But only a few months ago I did a post on this strategic plan which did impress me greatly. Maybe I was expecting a bit more of that visionary stuff in the SIP. And that’s always the problem with those bloody expectations – one gets all too easily disappointed.
