| Brisbane Transport |
Article Index for Brisbane |
Website Links For Brisbane |
Information AboutBrisbane Transport |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT BRISBANE TRANSPORT | |
| public transport in brisbane | |
| bus transport in australia | |
|
Catamaran Ferry ]] Brisbane Transport is a division of the Brisbane City Council . It operates Suburban , and Urban Bus Services in Brisbane , Queensland , Australia , under the '' TransLink '' integrated Public Transport scheme. The Brisbane City Council also manages passenger Ferry services, including CityCat catarmarans, and Cityferry on the Brisbane River , which is also part of the TransLink service. (Although Brisbane's CityTrain s are not managed by the Brisbane City Council, they also use the TransLink integrated public transport scheme.) FLEET Brisbane Transport is a business unit owned by the Brisbane City Council . Many of its services use the South-East Busway and the Inner-Northern Busway , which are grade separated from other roads and are served by large stations. The fleet is being steadily replaced with low-floor natural gas buses such as 217 Scania L94UB models, with 180 new MAN 18.310 low-floor gas buses to come, with a further option for 120. It currently operates over 700 buses and provided 53.1 million passenger trips in the 2004 / 2005 Financial Year , reportedly the highest since 1974 . For more information regarding Brisbane Transport's bus fleet, visit Brisbane Transport on the internet Brisbane Bus, CityCat and Cityferry information For a list of routes and timetables, see:
HISTORY Brisbane Transport's origins can be traced back to the Metropolitan Tramways and Investment Company, which established a small horse tramway under franchise from the Queensland government in Brisbane in August 1885. This company was purchased by the Brisbane Tramways Company, which electrified and expanded the tram system from 1897. Horse tram routes Horse Trams ran to the following suburbs:
Nationalisation of trams Brisbane's tram system remained in private hands until 1922, at which time the Queensland government established the Brisbane Tramways Trust, which compulsorily acquired the tram network and supporting infrastructure. In 1925 the state government created the Brisbane City Council and transferred responsibility for the tram network from the trust to the council. The tramways were administered by the Tramways Department of the City Council. This department subsequently became the Tramways and Electricity Department, and subsequently the Transport Department after the second world war. The Brisbane Tramways Trust experimented with providing bus services in the 1920s but these proved impractical due to mechanical unreliability and very poor road surface quality throughout Brisbane. The first permanent bus services were introduced in 1940 as a supplement to Brisbane's excellent and frequent tram services. Tram depots Tram Depots were located at the following places (years of operation in brackets):
Ipswich Road and Light Street depots continued to be used as bus depots after the closure of the tram system. Workshops, power houses and administration Workshops and administration were initially located in cramped quarters at Countess Street, at the western side of the Roma Street railway yards (now the site of the Roma Street Parkland ), but in 1927 were relocated to Milton . Access to the workshops was from Boomerang Street Milton , off Milton Road. Head Office was accessed from Coronation Drive. Power for the electric trams was originally drawn from a Power Station operated by the tramway company adjacent to its Countess Street depot and workshops. As the tramway company increased both the number of trams and the length of routes, the power supply rapidly became inadequate. Additional power generating units were installed at Light Street depot and a further powerhouse was built on Logan Road Woolloongabba , adjacent to the Woolloongabba railway line. Inadequate power supply was to remain a problem while the tramways remained in private hands. With the takeover of the system in 1922 by the Tramway Trust (and subsequently the City Council) considerable investment was made in many areas including power generation and distribution. A larger powerhouse was built in New Farm which commenced generation in 1928 and was sufficient for both the needs of the tram system and other consumers. Post-war developments In 1948 the City Council "municipalised" a number of privately run bus operators and expanded its own fleet of buses. Through the 1940's and 1950's the Brisbane City Council continued to expand its tram network and upgraded its fleet with some of the most advanced trams in Australia. A feature of Brisbane's transport system has been the practice of "through-running", where many bus and tram routes did not terminate within the Central Business District but ran from one suburb to another, via the city or Fortitude Valley . Despite the overall expansion of the tram system, a number of short difficult to operate routes were closed. The first tram lines to close were the Lower Edward Street - Gardens route and the Upper Edward Steet - Gregory Terrace route in 1947 the latter due to the very steep grades on that line. Initially Diesel engined buses replaced tram services on these lines, however these were replaced by Trolleybus es on 12 August 1951 . The City Council had also intended to introduce a trolley-bus service to the new University Of Queensland campus at St Lucia and purchased enough trolley-bus chasses from the United Kingdom for the Gardens route and this project. However it was vigorously opposed by residents and the St Lucia plan was abandoned. The City Council found itself with surplus trolley-buses but no route on which to run them. The Council decided to run the trolley-buses from Herston to Stanley Bridge, East Brisbane , with this service commencing in 1952 . Several other trolley-bus routes were subsequently established in the eastern suburbs. The first of these replaced a tram route, along Cavendish Road, in 1955 . Other trolley-bus routes to Seven Hills and Carina did not involve tram route closures. The short Chatsworth Road tram line was closed in 1957 . Trolley-bus routes in 1961 Trolley-buses ran on the following routes:
The Trolley-bus depot and workshops were located on Milton Road, Milton , between Hale and Castlemaine Streets. The former depot was demolished to make way for the redeveloped Suncorp Stadium . Tram routes in 1961 Trams ran on the following routes:
Decline of the electric street transport systems Urban development, often well away from public transport, the rise of suburban shopping centres and the relative decline in the cost of motorcars meant that as elsewhere, Brisbane's public street transport system increasingly had to compete with the private motor car and patronage slowly declined from a post war peak of 148,000,000 passenger journeys in 1946, to approximately 64,000,000 passenger journeys in 1968. Political support for the tram system waned in the 1960's, particularly so after the Paddington Tram Depot Fire in September 1962, when 65 trams were destroyed. Brisbane's Lord Mayor Ald Clem Jones (1961-1974) was unashamedly pro-freeway and private car. The Kalinga, Toowong, Rainworth and Bulimba Ferry routes closed in December 1962. The closure of the tram and trolleybus systems Finally in common with most other Cities throughout the English-speaking World , Brisbane converted its remaining tram lines between 1968 and 1969 to all bus operation. The last trolley buses ran on 13 March 1969 and the final trams ran on 13 April 1969. A selection of trams and trolley buses are preserved at the Brisbane Tramway Museum . The tramway closure was notable for the speed with which it was carried out. Several hundred replacement buses were purchased from British vehicle manufacturer Leyland, at the time the largest single bus purchase in the world. The sudden acquisition of so many buses was to have repercussions in later years. Initially the Leyland Panther buses proved unreliable and as a result older, front-engined mounted buses, such as the Leyland Mk III Regals dating from the 1940s were retained well past their normal replacement date. Once the problems with the Panthers were ironed out, overall fleet numbers and maintenance requirements were reduced. Nevertheless the fleet retained many older buses from the 1950s and early 1960s . In 1975 the Australian Federal Government led by Gough Whitlam made $80 million available to the Queensland state government which was intended to be passed to the Brisbane City Council for the purchase of replacement buses. The Queensland Government refused to transfer the funds to the City Council and instead used the money to construct the Parliamentatry Annexe Building and to restore Parliament House. As the replacement bus fleet aged, their maintenance requirements steadily increased, at a time when labour and spare parts costs had risen sharply. Further, as the tram replacement buses started to wear out at about the same time and needed replacement, the council was faced with another large capital outlay. Susequently in 1976 the City Council was able to negotiate some federal funding, enabling them to purchase Volvo B-59M buses, the first fleet acquisistions in seven years. The bus system struggled on... Patronage on the buses continued to decline, despite the best efforts of the Transport Department, hampered by rising fuel and labour costs, together with tightening budgets which led to further cuts in services. An ageing bus fleet, some of which had been in service since the 1940's, made the service increasingly unattractive. A further hindrance was the City Council's own aggressively pro-car 1964 city plan, which required all developments to include car parking, but did not require the provision of any facilities that might advantage public transport. By the 1980s bus patronage had dropped to approximately 40,000,000 passenger journeys per annum. However, this was not to say that the City Council completely failed to invest in public transport. New depots were constructed at Carina and Toowong . Modern workshops were also constructed at Toowong and the former tram workshops at Milton decommissioned. A network of express routes, called "cityxpress", using buses with comfortable, high-backed seating bolstered patronage, particularly in outer suburbs. The underground Queen Street bus station, opened in 1988 , facilitated passenger movement. The Transport department's administration was relocated to the Brisbane Administration Centre (BAC) along with most other City Council administrative units. Slowly the decline in patronage was halted. Post-Corporatisation developments In the 1990s Brisbane City Council Corporatised its transport services to form Brisbane Transport, a Council-owned enterprise managed along business lines at arm's length from the Council of the day. Brisbane Transport's ferry services have been contracted out to a private operator, Metrolink Queensland . The fall in patronage has been reversed in recent times by the introduction of a single integrated ticketing system for all of South East Queensland 's public transport operators known as TransLink . The construction of grade-separated Busway s and the introduction of several high-frequency express routes known as Bus Upgrade Zone s (BUZ) has also seen patronage rise substantially for the first time in decades. The rise in the cost of petrol is also making public transport a financially more attractive option for many commuters. On 14 November 2005, Queensland authorities shutdown bus and train services whilst a bomb-related security alert was investigated. Premier Peter Beattie told the public that authorities were being over-cautious in light of terror raids in Sydney and Melbourne the week prior. {Link without Title} REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|