Re: Brisbane Light Rail,Briztram - questions

[Michael Chinn <qamh-michael@powerup.com.au>]

Anna Bligh was actually in favour of the tram extending over the river but she
(like most politicians) does what the loudest majority wants.
The current route has it terminating apporx 50m before the shopping centre of
West End. The stop will separated from it by a very busy 5 way round-about. Why?
As far as I've heard it wasn't the residents at all but the local businesses
worried about trade (the shops in question have recently gone through about 5
tenants in 12 mnths). The stop also falls short of the West End Markets
re-development, (that takes away the only local shopping centre with reasonable
prices and replaces it with a Coles Express and units priced at >$200,000 a cell
block.
Politically ATM West End is a political minefield as far as I know there are
probably a couple of dozen factions all lobbying for different things each with
their own little part of West End to do it in.
The problem with the bridge was partly a strong distrust of what the intentions
of it really were, was it a 'green' bridge (love that bit of spin doctoring just
like 'eco' tourism) or was it going to simply be another river crossing, and was
the end result going to be another Woolloongabba.
The fall of these people to the anti-bridge lobby tipped the balance in their
favour (although going to a couple of meetings I can say that there was
definitly another adgenda behind that lobby group.)
Prior to BrisTram the plan was to continue around to St Lucia via Milton and
Toowong but the bottle neck of traffic caused by the Toowong shops prevented any
reasonable soltuion taking form that would require a very large investment in
tunnels or flyovers (thanks to QR for such a lovely Blue Roadblock)

Probably one of the more interesting issues with the tram is actually to do with
the route to the RBH
(I think the have 3 seperate vehicle routes - A busway, A Freeway,
A railway (that doesn't have a large amount of traffic anyway) but the Tram-way is
the only one NOT to traverse Victoria Park.
So why dont they look at combining it, with the bus or rail routes?
Maybe if we every get the integrated ticketing we were promised years ago (we've
only waited 6 years since SEQRTS)
you could catch a tram from the city to the bus interchange at the RBH or better
yet all the way up Gympie Rd, and transfer to you local community bus service.
After what has happened already the tram will
probably get no further than Wickham St the valley.

enough ranting
regards
michael