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.

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There is a lot to be liked about this study from a rail transport perspective:

Elements of a good transport plan

• As clumsy as the study name may sound, the authors showed a clear understanding that the future in and around Australia’s big cities has to be about ‘mass transit’ which effectively requires high capacity corridors with an efficient feeder system.
• This is precisely what is shown in the picture of this post, mass transit ‘spines’ between the major urban centres of the SEQ area with feeder/distributor systems at either end.
• The study plans about 25 years ahead (from when it started, apparently) until 2041. This is not as far ahead as Sydney, for example, with their Future Transport 2056 plan, but still reasonably far and at the same time not too far to make the end state a mere blurry pie-in-the-sky vision.
• The study cites modern “transformative technologies” which refreshingly do not include innovative word bubbles such as ‘big data’ or ‘Internet of Things’ but are actually all transport-related. They even are properly explained, demonstrating that someone really knew what he was talking about.
• The study is very concrete in that is lists 47 transport infrastructure projects in different priority levels, depending on the available budgets at the time.
• Talking of budgets, this study actually addressed the affordability and budget requirements for the implementation of the priority projects, with the total estimate being $43.9 billion for the base investment scenario, or $63.7 billion when adding the “advanced scenario”.
• From a rail perspective, the proposed projects form a very common-sensical mixture which can be observed in similar composition in other Australian states, most notably in Victoria.
• The mix of rail projects include landmark projects for increasing inner-city capacity in Brisbane (Cross River Rail and Brisbane Metro, although the latter is actually road-based, not a rail system), extensions of the existing suburban rail network (Springfield-Ripley, Salisbury-Beaudesert), connections to the two next biggest SEQ airports after Brisbane (Caboolture-Maroochydore and Varsity Lakes-Coolangatta), level crossing removals and “Faster Rail” connections for mass transit spines from Brisbane to the main regional centres in the north, south and west.

The most essential support

I left my most promising observation for last. Assuming that the Council of Mayors will consist of members from both big political parties, there is a fair chance that the plan drawn up in this study has bipartisan support. In my view an essential prerequisite to get the plan implemented, irrespective of changes in government.

The SEQ People Mass Movement Study has made the demand and the vision for future transport in South East Queensland abundantly clear. Now all there is left to do is finding the budget to make this plan a reality.

You can find more information on the study here.

(For those of you who wonder about the connection of this post to the blog theme Signalling Simplicity: The logic and common sense which I see in this SEQ People Mass Movement Study is very much related to the general concept of simplicity. And there will be signalling scope in all of the above-mentioned rail projects, so that it is useful to know what’s coming.)

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