Australia's Most Under-appreciated Rail System? | Brisbane's Transit Explained 

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Brisbane truly has 'made it'. Not because we have the Olympics, but because we got a RM Transit video about us!

As a Brisbane resident of over 30 years, this was a surprising video. Just goes to show what a third party/fresh pair of eyes brings to the table in terms of thinking and experiences!

Having lived in Brisbane for over 10 years, my biggest issue with the trains is the lack of services. I usually travel outside of peak hours and trains only run half-hourly (worse other lines). Otherwise it's great to travel by public transport. Another thing, the busways were originally built to be capable of carrying trams. The gradients, heights, and strength were all built for much heavier trams should thenday come where they need to be upgraded

The bats you saw in Brisbane are called flying foxes in the genus Pteropus! Flying foxes are in the genuses Acerodon and Pteropus. Flying foxes are megabats and they're among the largest in the world. The black flying fox, little red flying-fox, and grey-headed flying fox are found around Brisbane. The black flying fox in particular has the most impressive wingspan of the three as they have a wingspan of more than 1 meter (39 inches), though they're not the largest in the genus Pteropus as the large flying fox or Pteropus vampyrus of Southeast Asia has the longest wingspan of any bat species at 1.5 meters (4 feet 11 inches). There's a reason you may not see bats in Canada: The destruction of bat roosts, pesticide use, cave exploration, and habitat destruction have all contributed to bat population declines in Canada. However, a deadly fungal disease, White Nose Syndrome, is currently the most serious threat to Canada's bats. There are eighteen bat species indigenous to Canada, and of these bats, the little brown bat is the most common and widely distributed of Canada's bat species, though more prevalent in the eastern provinces than western. The largest bat in Canada is the hoary bat, which is found throughout most of North America, and within Canada can be found from southern Nunavut to Newfoundland.

This was such a fun video to watch as a fun "where's that" game for me. Seeing my uni, local station, shots near mates' places and places I've worked frankly just as enjoyable as hearing just how great our public transit will be pretty soon!

As someone who has always lived in Brisbane, I have always been a fan of the public transport network. The biggest issue we face now is the complete lack of outer city surburban design to utilise this infrastructure and the market capture from property developers.

I would just like to take the moment to say i appreciate you for taking the time to research how to pronounce every single suburb, location and important building. I've seen many fail to pronounce Brisbane correctly so yeah!

There are actually some other major projects that could be included in a future update: the Logan to Gold Coast Faster Rail project (which will massively improve that line...it takes 19 minutes longer to get from Loganlea to the CBD than it does to Varsity Lakes, which is much farther). Another is the Beerburrum-to-Nambour upgrade, as well as the Direct Sunshine Coast Line and the Southeast Busway Extension. There's also yet still more sitting on the shelf...the Salisbury to Beaudesert line, the Toowoomba-to-Brisbane line, Gold Coast line extension to Coolangatta, and the Ipswich-to-Springfield line.

Wishlist: Brisbane Orbital Line Need another underground train tunnel to connect eastern suburbs to northern suburbs, forming a part of a future bypass line away from the city centre, to connect Cleveland through to Airport, Nundah, Chermside, Stafford, Alderley. Stage 2 of this orbital line could continue south towards Ashgrove, Paddington, Auchenflower, West End, Highgate Hill and complete the loop back to the other rail lines at Park Road This proposed line will service those who can’t drive with an option similar to the Gateway bridges (currently too steep to retrofit for rail services).

Literally watching this while taking the train home in Brisbane ❤

Its strange to see my city get looked at, even more so to hear the town i used to live in get mentioned. In isolation our transit seems flawed, but a fresh pair of eyes really highlights just how good it is

Delighted to see Brisbane being covered. My aunt lives there so it’s usually our base if we visit Australia. I was always fascinated by the BRT & taxi system there

I think my main issue with the Cross River Rail as someone who lives in Brisbane, is by and large the fact that the options you have from getting from Wooloongabba to the places it will service are so numerous, you will never find a period of time where you think "Oh, if only there was a service that could take me from here to there". The current wait times on further out lines, as well as a lack of common express services, means that a route that would take me 45 minutes in the car, can take me upwards of 2 hours, and I just don't have that time anymore as an adult.

Another great video, Reece! Brisbane seems like it isn't talked about enough in global transit discourse, but I guess that's what happens when you share a country with Melbourne and Sydney.

I'm glad to see you make a video about Brisbane The CRR has been a long time coming after it was first proposed in 2010. There's also a bunch of other projects that have been proposed but given how slow progress has been for rail infrastructure in Queensland it could be any time in the next 50 years that they're completed. There's been proposals for branch line to Maroochydore (one of the busier suburbs of the Sunshine Coast) since the 1990s and it's supposedly going to start in the next few years. Queensland also got rid of rail lines before later realising they probably shouldn't have. The Ferny Grove line used to go even further to the town of Dayboro. The Doomben line used to go all the way to Pinkenba servicing a lot of industrial areas beyond Doomben. The original Gold Coast line went through a lot more of the busy areas but was closed in 1964 they later rebuilt the line in the 1990s

A couple of other projects that you missed: - In addition to extending the G-link to the Gold Coast airport, there's also talk of extending the Gold Coast rail line down to the airport. In fact the state government of Queensland is having a bit of a tiff with the Gold Coast City Council about which line should be extended first. - There's also some talk of extending the G-link north and west of Helensvale to serve Movieworld and Dreamworld, the Gold Coast theme parks, which are hugely popular tourist destinations but also severely car-dependent. This will probably have to wait until after the airport extension and the Olympics though. (Seaworld, which is on an ocean spit closer to the city, has okay public transport access and integration with the light rail thanks to a ferry service, although it really needs more ferries per hour to be properly accessible). - Outside of Brisbane, Queensland is also in the running for the best and most under-appreciated intercity services in Australia, with services to Charleville, Longreach, Mt Isa and Cairns that have decent coverage for most cities in the state. Weirdly enough, the Electric Tilt Train from Brisbane to Rockhampton, built by local manufacturer Walkers Ltd., actually holds the Australian speed record for fastest trains, reaching 210km/h in test conditions. This is very embarrassing for high-speed rail advocates because you aren't supposed to reach 200km/h on narrow gauge lines.

Wow, collecting all the major Australian cities. As someone who lives in Perth, never got around to learning about Brisbane's system

Brisbane is getting a bunch of new model trains in time for the Olympics too. They'll be made at a new rail manufacturing facility near Maryborough Qld, and won't have the same problems that the NGR trains have.

Cool to see a video about our system here in Brisbane! I would like to offer a bit of anecdotal experience, if you will, to give an idea of what the transit system can be like. The way it is portrayed here is certainly accurate, and I loved the video, but Brisbane certainly has some exceptional flaws haha. Firstly on the Metro, yeah it is quite controversial, because Brisbane did away with trams many, many years ago, and despite the Gold Coast deciding to make one (that works quite well, despite its speed, but I'll mention that later), Brisbane is sort of doubling down by making the Metro, and realistically the speed of it doesn't seem to entice a whole lot of people, since the vast majority of Brisbane residents live *outside* the city (and I may be wrong when it is rolled out, but we'll see). On the point of speed though, the Gold Coast line and the G:Link are impressive, there is no doubting that. However, if you were in an area like Surfer's Paradise, the amount of time it takes to get to Brisbane Central is eye-watering. It's literally like 5x less distance than Tokyo to Kyoto and takes about the same time (roughly 30-35 minutes on the Tram and then about 1 hour and 20 or so minutes to Central from Helensvale). It's a bit rough. The government have decided that instead of increasing the speed or frequency of these services, they are adding another lane to the highway which is constantly congested, so people will continue to drive because even when it is congested, the time it takes to drive to the city is still sometimes faster lol. But when it is really bad it's like 2 hours on the highway which is rough. Then the Cross River Rail seems like a really promising and cool project, but it also faces some problems because of how much it is disrupting the train network, for example changing the Shorncliffe and Cleveland line to instead be a Shorncliffe and Ipswich line, and the Gold Coast/Sunshine Coast changes you mentioned. Some people are sort of missing out on a lot of the Cross River Rail benefits since again, most people don't live in the city, unlike places like Melbourne and Sydney where it is more common to live really close to the city. I am eager to see the benefits of Cross River Rail but you quite eloquently pointed out that some of the missed opportunities overall are a little frustrating given the time it will take to complete. Also just in general, our trains are always delayed. People who live in North Brisbane will know exactly what I am talking about but man, it is frustrating when the already slow trains going to the North are delayed, but it happens a fair bit. Quite a number of services get delayed, particularly ones like Cleveland and Shorncliffe due to some signalling issues that still haven't been fixed, and just in general most of the services are really slow. There actually used to be a whole bus service that went through many more northern areas of Brisbane (the south side has more or less retained a lot of this) but they were abolished because of the introduction of the Redcliffe Peninsula line since it goes through so many more northern areas, and the really sad thing about that is that the buses were substantially faster than the train... But alas. Overall, Brisbane has a sophisticated and mostly well thought out system, but man using it my entire life for things like work, social events, seeing family and friends, and university, it's hard not to hate some of the more annoying things that you only really experience by using it all the time. The speed, for me, is the biggest one. Having university classes at like 9am instead of 8am would mean the trains stop running at 15 minute intervals at a lot of stations, and then you spend an hour even though it probably would take less to drive... Anyway I am ranting now lol, but great video man! Really appreciated you highlighting our system, since usually Sydney and Melbourne get all the love, and we never do in Brissy!!!

The reason the Brisbane trains/network reminds you of Perth is that the Perth A and B sets were built in Maryborough, QLD alongside the EMUs and SMUs. Both use the same signalling too.

Those Brisbane Metro bi-articulated buses are BEAUTIFUL. Imagine if the T in Boston acquired those for expanded Silver Line service

Bit of a hiccup with the Rail network in Brisbane. During Peak Hours, Queensland Rail will run their Gold Coast Line trains on the dual gauge line between South Bank and Sailsbury to avoid the Beenleigh Line trains. Also, the Merivale bridge between South Brisbane and Roma Street Stations only has 2 tracks. It can become a choke point during peak hours. This becomes strained when the XPT comes up from Sydney overnight. Arriving in Brisbane at 0455 hours (0355 in daylight savings) and leaving at 0555 (0455 in daylight savings), before the morning peak. If the XPT is delayed, the most common causes are issues with the train due to age, police action, track issues, or interference from goods trains. It creates a knock-on effect for the peak-hour services that need to use the line from the Gold Coast. If the delay is more than an hour. The XPT is shut out of Brisbane Roma Street and terminates at Casino, south of the QLD Border.

I live in brisbane and my only complaints about the trains are that they don't have enough lines (several areas of the city are inaccessable by train and you gotta walk really far from what busses do go near where you're headed) and they don't run late enough, I know they'd hardly get enough customers to be worth it at like 2am but it'd still be nice

An interesting fact about the Ferny Grove line, it used to run all the way up the mountain to Dayboro, until a train came off the tracks along the way in Camp Mountain in 1947 killing 16 people. The line now stops at the Ferny Grove station

Yes!!!! My hometown getting coverage. It's 11pm here so I'm going to bed but I'm very excited for breakfast tomorrow where I can give this vid a watch

Suncorp Stadium is not the main stadium of the 2032 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, it's the Gabba you mentioned before it as the Gabba will host the ceremonies and athletics events. And the reason why Brisbane 2032 is using venues in Gold Coast is because Gold Coast previously hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games, so they have plenty of experience hosting a big event with different sports. And Q1 isn't just a tall skyscraper, it's a residential building! And from 2005 to 2011, it was the world's tallest residential building! The reason they ran an Exhibition loop service was to convey passengers during the Royal Queensland Show/the Ekka in August and other special events held in the showgrounds. But as you brought up, the loop is no longer a thing as the line was realigned as part of the Cross River Rail project in what was described as one of the longest and most complicated pieces of track work ever undertaken in southeastern Queensland, and this included a new 150-metre bridge outside the Brisbane Showgrounds. This means that a newly upgraded Exhibition station will provide rail services all year round.

Fun fact - the exhibition line is being reincorporated into cross river rail! So it will actually become a permanent station on the main line. Previously it only ran for big shows like the Ekka.

I live in Brisbane and I've always been a huge supporter of the public transport network we have here. So often do I hear people throwing slander at it, and unsurprisingly (as it is with most things), the people who have the harshest views on the network are those who have either never use or very rarely use it and "have heard it from a friend of a friend". It's really quite refreshing to hear that someone else from out of town approves of the network

Fun Fact! There's an old line from Corinda Station to Yeerongpilly Station that connects The Ipswich and Beenleigh/Gold Coast lines called the Tennyson Line! These days, it's mainly used for freight (or an emergency detour to the city for southern passenger trains) but it was a passenger line until 2011! The Crossriver Rail tunnel was originally supposed start at Yeerongpilly Station so trains along the Ipswich Line could access it via the Tennyson Line.

Thank you as a Queenslander I was hoping this video would come

I have been living in the SEQ area for the past 2.5 years and I am honestly impressed that this Rail and Bus network is finally getting covered. I honestly love the network and yeah its not perfect but it's incredibly charming in its own way.

Brisbane is named after the Brisbane River, which in turn was named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, the governor of New South Wales from 1821 to 1825. The name is derived from the Scottish Gaelic bris, meaning "to break or smash" and the Old English word ban meaning bone! Besides Gold Coast, Flexity 2 trams are also used in Blackpool (where they debuted), Melbourne, Suzhou, Antwerp, Ghent, and Basel. The G:link opened with sixteen stations in July 2014, with three more added in December 2017 (Helensvale, Parkwood, Parkwood East) in time for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, and the system helped during the Games big time as it moved over 9 million people between 2017 and 2018. It moved over 10 million between 2018 and 2019. Between 2018 and 2019, 35 percent of Gold Coast transit patronage was light rail. And including the stage three and stage four extensions, the system has a bright future. And regarding the ferries RiverCity Ferries operates three ferry services along the Brisbane River which are the CityCat, Cross River and CityHopper. The CityCats are an iconic part of the city, and a neat thing about them is they're named for Aboriginal place names along the river and Aboriginal people. Like how one is named after Neville Bonner who was the first Aboriginal to become a MP (a senator for Queensland), Walan which is the original name of Herston, and Ya-wa-gara which is the original name of Breakfast Creek.

Brisbane’s system has a lot of faults but is very charming still, about to get much better with CRR too! Love how the river is used for the city as a whole

I lived in Brisbane for highschool and university and I've got to say I loved it, the ease of go cards and how well connected it's bus services are really made it feel like I wasn't restricted by not having a car. 10/10 would recommend

Cool seeing you review my city. One bit of track you missed is the Tennyson line - its a branch between the Beenleigh and Ipswich/Caboolture lines that is used when there is track maintenance in South Bank/Park Rd stations so the Gold Coast/Beenleigh line can still connect to the city.

Great overview! If anybody is interested in the Cross River Rail project I have a fair few construction updates on my channel (and more to come!) and I'm also planning to take a look at the progress on the "Metro" station construction, as well as the next stage of the Gold Coast Light Rail.

Always love to see my city mentioned, we often get overshadowed by our larger cousins down south

I am in my 60s and have lived in Brisbane for most of my life. The transport network here is light years better now that it was was I was growing up. We had an extensice tram network which was closed in 1969 and replaced by buses. Services are now much more frequent and reliable than in days gone by, A big problem with the network is that the rail network all goes to the centre, rail lines are few on the southside, especially in the southeastern suburbs towards Upper Mt Gravatt/Loganholme and Carindale, and also in the west towards Kenmore and the Centenary suburbs, and there is a lack of east-west radial north and south of the river to interconnect the various lines.

As someone who catches Brisbane trains and buses to work each day, seeing all of this footage and discussion on RU-vid is kinda surreal. Very cool, and very well presented video.

The biggest problem is the Lack of service. On some sundays, you might see entire sections be stopped for maintainance, ex Toowong and Auchenflower, and while trains come pretty frequently in the core areas, even more between roma street and bowen hills, but the lack of service makes it rather inconvinent, especially if you don't use it regularly. The merivale bridge is a massive bottleneck especially so because 3 lines converge, with some extra trains that head into doomben, and combined with the pretty tight turn on the north side, limits capacity. Therefore crossriver rail will alleviate much if it by decreasing the amount travelling across merivale. BTW, I also agree about making the ipswich line express until darra, but there is a decent amount of development, which just means that I want ToD to be increased and express lines added, because they both need to happen because QR will just continue making park and rides and not focus on the real problem, which in my opinion is urban sprawl and a lack of concentrated development.

The Exhibition line is/was also used for trains serving the Brisbane Showgrounds during major events such as Ekka - the Royal Queensland Show. I got to ride it (and visit Ekka) in August 2022 when my flight to Wellington got cancelled and I had to spend an extra day in Brisbane.

Excellent clip. You always astound for your ability to encapsulate complex systems into short, enjoyable and comprehensive content. Good to see Brisbane, our Cinderella city get coverage.

Surfers paradise and it's tram are both in the racing game Forza horizon 3, I've spent a lot of time messing with the trams lol

Every mainland state capital is investing heavily in their rail networks. Meanwhile in Adelaide… 😭

The main stadium for the 2032 Olympics will be The Gabba, which they are thinking about knocking down and rebuilding. Then there’s also some ideas about making a rail line to the Sunshine Coast Airport at Maroochydore.

Thank you for covering the River City!

As someone that grew up living next to Thorneside station on the Cleveland line, I’ve been waiting a long time for this

I hope Bluey watches this video.

Gabba is hosting the ceremonies and athletics events. Lang Park is doing the football and rugby.

Hey! Trainspotting SEQ here, one of the major rail youtubers in south east queensland, just a quick note, the network is inefficient in many places but can be useful and better than other modes of transport in some parts

It was really nice to see an urbanism channel highlight the positives in Brisbane. As a daily rider lots of people I talk to focus on the negatives, so it was good to see people who know what they are talking about, talk about the positives of the system

Hell yeah another Aussie train system! I went on the Gold Coast train and tram in July :D

Nice video. I used to live in Brisbane. It has a special place in my heart as it was the first place I set foot in this country two decades ago. For future reference: Beenleigh is pronounced "Been Lee."

In 2000, the Olympics in Sydney were the best two weeks ever. 2032’s gonna be awesome

Brisbane is subtropical. The tropics don’t begin until you reach The Tropic of Capricorn at Rockhampton, 650 kms north of Brisbane. Then you have the dry tropics to Townsville, before you reach the wet tropics just below Cairns.

as a brisbane resident this was very surprising to see in my recommended but super fun to watch. i love learning as much as i can about our public transport system. i could even overlook some of the place pronunciations for it 😁 (you got most of them right dw)

Fares have dropped considerably compared to 25 years ago. The Brisbane skytrain used to cost double compared to today making a taxi more cost effective back then. The busways have simplified the commute into the city but try to avoid entering a busway with your car which I once did. I even remember when QR still used diesel powered trains back in the 1980's.

Fun fact: Brisbane's public transport patronage peaked in year 1944-45. The former tram network alone carried 160 million passengers.

Please do a video on Greater Manchester’s Bee Network - turning our transit into a London-style system!

Fun fact that not a lot of people really know. The south East Queensland network originated from Ipswich. The rail workshop there is now a museum and they run exhibition trains using the steam locomotives there now and then, so on top of all the modern trains, there's also the element of old-fashioned magic of steam in there too.

The Brisbane 'Metros' are not good lol. They're basically double-length electric buses. The city paid something in the order of $30 million for each of them. 'Gimmicky' is exactly the word I'd use to describe them. Very much a political pony show. The South East public transit system in general certainly isn't the worst in the world but it's a lot spottier than this video seems to imply. If you're lucky enough to live in walking distance of a train station then you're generally gonna get pretty good service. If you live in the inner-city then you've generally got decent options with buses to fill in the gaps in the train network. But there's an awful lot of urban sprawl that has poor bus connections and next to, or literally no, train services. In the outer suburbs, buses generally run on a loop towards the city and you'll have to transfer multiple loops to traverse across town if you're not citybound. Traffic congestion is terrible and you've got that to enjoy on your long bus trips as well. The city and state governments should be making far more effort to expand the number of train lines but with the few exceptions you've mentioned, they generally prefer to widen lanes again and again and engineer car traffic. The Gold Coast has some interesting plans for expansion of the tram network but the Sunshine coast is abysmal in terms of transit. Brisbane and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts have some beautiful scenery and there's definitely things to like about the transit system but I genuinely think it's a class below the likes of Sydney and Melbourne, and the plans for expansion really aren't anywhere near as ambitious as Sydney's (actual) metro network or Melbourne's intricate tram network (ntm Daniel Andrew's campaign to eliminate level crossings at rail stations).

I'm getting home sick just watching this video. I've been away from Brisbane for 8 months and I miss it every single day.

I’ve lived and worked in the Brisbane area for over a decade, and the amount of upgrades to the public transport system, transport infrastructure and trains has been quite impressive… but not without hiccups! There was some issues with the newer trains not being suitable for various reasons. All in all it’s still a great transition.

I saw this on Nebula yesterday and maybe the error was caught and fixed before going to RU-vid, but in case it wasn't, the Gabba is going to be the host of the Olympics, not Lang Park (whose commercial name is Suncorp Stadium) as the video said.

UP THE GOLD COAST! Thank you for such a wonderful video on Brisbane, it truly is a treat going up there and spending time on its trains. Also glad you liked the G:Link (we more or less just call it "the tram"). When i went to Melbourne, i was shocked how early the trains stopped. I've been in Surfers at 1am and was able to tram, but couldn't at 10pm in Fitzroy. Anyway, I wish the Gold Coast took a page out of Brisbane's dedication and love for busses, as our city is very very very car centric apart from the tram, which doesn't really serve suburbs/housing. Buses take an hour on 10 minute car rides and there's barely any bike infrastructure so most people drive. Also doesn't help that a lot of people/nimby's have tried to reject the Burleigh Heads and Airport expansion of the tram. I think (very subjective and not at all grounded) we should expand it westwards, from Surfers to Nerang via HOTA, botanical gardens, and Metricon/Heritage stadium, from Nobbys to Robina via Bond uni and the shopping center, up past Southport along the north strip up to the new Hope Island station, and maybe to Coolangatta/Tweed heads? I know Murwillumbah is making a train from there to Casino via Lismore and Byron, maybe link the GC train line with that? Or go to the Northern Rivers (to Pottsville)? Glad you had a great time! We hope to see you soon! EDIT: I misread something and the Northern rivers train from Murwillumbah to Casino is not in planning. It was destroyed in the past few years and portions of it are being turned into a bike track.

cheers for covering Brisbane. The footage is notable very current as well.

I've lived in Brisbane for over 12 years and I will say, thanks for covering this video. Ik I've used the transportation a lot and I still do. It's a very solid public transport system, not perfect but it's not bad

A great video as usual, Reece (though I couldn’t help but giggle at your pronunciation of Beenleigh!) You explained the up sides of Brisbane transport system very well but didn’t really go into the downsides - the main one being relatively poor frequencies (most rail lines are only every 30 minutes off-peak). Also, the Brisbane bus network is … umm … dreadful. It’s a confusing mishmash of mostly infrequent routes with an insanely bewildering variety of stopping patterns and route variations all mostly converging on the city centre. The bus network is so complicated that there isn’t even a network map, it would be almost impossible to draw a legible map. There isn’t a single high-frequency cross-suburban bus so most trips between suburbs require going all the way into the city and back out again. There has been some good work done on improving SEQ’s public transport system but it still lags a very long way behind Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and consequently has much lower ridership than those three cities.

Great video coming from a local!

As an Aussie I just love the way the us and Canada pronounce brisBAIN and Mel boRn. Please don't stop doing that, it's entertaining 😂

Dang, never expected a Australian city to have such a good public transit system

Lack of service is appalling and memeworthy. Queensland Rail made a huge deal about how they upped their frequency, and I quote, "with trains coming every 15 minutes, there's no need for a timetable."

I didn't know much about Brisbane until recently. I had no idea it was so big. The rail network seems on the one hand impressive, and on the other sorely lacking in a few areas, but hopefully it will improve. What I don't understand is why a city like that needs so many busways. Just convert them to rail already. Busways are clearly a cheap stop-gap solution, which is fine, but it seems like they're pushing the limits of what buses are good for.

Thank you for making a video on this, its been long awaited.

Its cool seeing my home city in a video like this. I would catch the train to high school and back everyday from Ipswich way to Central station with a few km walk in between

Would love those biarticulated buses to make an appearance on the Albuquerque Rapid Transit

You did well to pick up the sectorization between the Ipswich / Cabo line and the rest of the network. Fundamentally, this is what Cross River Rail is about too. Specifically, taking the two most problematic lines (north coast and gold coast), tying then together and then sectorizing them off from the rest of the network. This on its own will likely allow many of the other issues to be solved more easily. If you try and think of Cross River Rail as an upgrade of the Gold Coast Line (which is how it is marketed), it winds up looking like some kind of high hanging fruit the is hard to do and doesn't actually bring much extra capacity or speed to the Gold Coast or Beenleigh.

The other week there was a truck that crashed into the inner-city rail bridge and nearly all of the trains had to either re-route or just turn around and go back to the depot (afaik there was no damage to the bridge but they needed to shut it down for safety). It wasn't a huge deal because of the great busways in the inner-city but I'm really glad that the cross-river rail is adding some proper redundancy as well as everything else.

Just recently i was down on the gold coast and saw some of the new track they are building to the airport. It seems they have made quite a bit of progress so far but locals oppose the track as it makes travelling by road way harder due to smaller roads.

Where is Brisbane on the scale of housing affordability? Also I find it ironic that a narrow gauge train (the Queensland Electro-Tilt Train) holds the record for fastest train in Australia.

Great video about my home city. I learnt new things, and would love it if you did another about the many rail expansions (e.g. extensions to Springfield and Gold Coast lines, new Sunshine Coast line, etc) following cross river rail’s relief of the bottleneck through the city. The electrification runs a long way further than the 650km to Rockhampton; it continues 270km west from there to Emerald and then 350km North East to near Mackay, although those sections’ electric trains are exclusively coal trains and not really transit, hey. The irony is that since those sections were electrified there weren’t enough electric locos left to haul freight up the coastal line, and the only electric trains along the coast north of Gympie are passenger, two each way a day to Bundaberg, reducing to one each way a day to Rockhampton.

FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

Thanks RMTransit. This is extremely comprehensive from a visiting Canadian. It appears you've travelled on much of Greater Brisbane's railed public transport and some bus services. The 'fake trams', or Metro, may have just started. I noticed them being tested at the Boggo Road bus section adjoining Park Road station. It was discussed decades ago - that brisbane would have trams across the river to Queensland University. I'm a part-time student there. However, having resided in Brisbane since the sixties, I can say that South East Queensland is very deficient in several ways. Brisbane was the world's fourth largest city in area. In the early twentieth century, the scant suburban lines served 100,000 population, as well as an electrified tram system. For people in the earlier part of the 20th century - it served nearly everyone. Buses are fine for youth who have no sense of wasting time - when on a train, we read, there's toilets and much more could be developed. So, Brisbane needs more than double its rail corridors - that haven't overall increased since then. I can go on - but I've written for years about the woes of Australia - especially in Norther Rivers, NSW, Australia's third most visited area - but gets trains that carry cars removed in 1990. Then gets closed down. Then ripped up for 'rail trails'- Thousands today can't get where they could have in the early twentieth century. Yes, my neighbours are taken away - for the faster rail from Brisbane to Gold Coast. Logan City, 350,000 pop. has only 7 stations - and they'e taking mine away.

Dont worry about the bats there. From what I've heard, they usually just eat fruit and/or insects

Really appreciate you having Nebula at the front of the video! I can't keep track of everyone I follow who is or isn't on Nebula and so many times I get like 2/3 or even all of the way through the video before the 'and also on Nebula!' alert and it's like _damn it_ now the creator won't get money for me watching it on Nebula. So super appreciate the heads up¡

Pretty cool to see the vehicles I work on featured in a video. I work at a rail facility in Maryborough about 300km north of Brisbane. The IMU100 and SMU200 were built there in the mid 1990s and the IMU160 and SMU260 were in the early 2000s to almost 2010 I think. The SMU class in both 160 and 260 models run slightly slower and have no toilet on board. the IMU in both classes run faster up to 140km/h and have a toilet fitted, they go as far north as Gympie, both of these variations are getting rotated through the facility where they were built getting mid life upgrades. The QNGR (the late modern looking ones are also onsite getting a 2nd toilet fitted for better experiences for walking impaired customers on the AVP (access variation project). Bonus fact the Perth trains were also built there under the PURD (Perth Urban Rail Development) contract.

Good to see my home city being shown off, we're often forgot about compared to Sydney/Melbourne :c

Once again I'm amazed that a Canadian is so knowledgeable about Australia's cities. Out of our major cities (which are called 'the big five') it appears that Adelaide is the only one not throwing billions of dollars at huge projects. It's good that Australia got out of the anti-public transport mindset that you see in basically all other English-speaking nations. The "Aussie S-Bahn" model could easily be implemented in countries like Canada, the US, and the UK.

Its so cool watching these types of videos being able to say "Yea ive been there"

Great video, love your work RM Transit man 👍

Was hoping you would be a little more critical of Brisbane’s transit network, Reece! The train network suffers with poor frequency compared to Sydney & Melbourne - most lines have trains every 30 minutes off-peak, and the few with 4tph off-peak don’t have this running on weekends / at night. You missed talking about the BUZ network too - which is a real testament to the power of frequent transport. It hasn’t been expanded recently though and off the BUZ network, the bus network is mediocre (but probably better than most US cities!). You can’t use your credit card to pay on buses and ferries - yet - that is coming soon. If you know Brisbane’s bus network well, getting around is a breeze, the problem is it’s so complicated, lots of people just drive instead.

Rapid charging electric buses is fun and neat. (Once again wishing Canada had more Sweden-like buses…) I do think a busway could be a smart place to test some self-driving bus technology in the near future, though?

Been waiting for this video for a while

I'm a frequent user of the system (can't drive) and save the occasional delayed train or cancelled bus (with little warning for either), the system is functional enough to get me to most places in Greater Brisbane (Brisbane proper, Ipswich, Logan, the Moreton Bay region or the Gold Coast) reasonably easily. The go card ticketing is a key factor in this, I lost mine for a bit and it was a pain to try figure out zoning.

The train from sydney once per day departs syd at 2:40 ish pm, arrives into brisbane at 4:55 am (14 hrs) and returns at 5:55 am. Due to the restrictive rail capacity, if the brisbane bound NSW based train is significantly delayed (which it occasionaly is), passengers will need to transfer to a bus at aproximatley 2 am to continue their journey as queensland wont let the late train through.

I take the train on regular basis so it's really weird to have this recommended haha. It's pretty solid but by god. I wish I could get to the gold coast from Ipswich in less then 4hrs.(it takes 50mins by car)

I had the great opportunity to live & work in Brisbane for 3 years over the Commonwealth Games period. Australia is simply the best country in the world to live and Brisbane is one of the best cities in the best country. The world can learn a lot from those Aussies.

The doomben line use to have another 4 stops that are now closed the last one being Pinkenba

I still think that potentially, all of these transit solutions that Brisbane is putting are very meager for its growth. Speeding up a busway and increasing its capacity is something which I don't believe will one day cover the expected 5M inhabitants. Also I don't think I've seen a lot of East West corridors? Unless there's really nothing there. Overall, same as Melbourne, I think this city needs a *proper* metro at some point, and as an immediate solution, not a long term one.