Increasingly, I am curious why the presence of a train station on a map immediately conjures up in the minds of some urban planners images of potentially vast numbers of people transiting by rail – an opportunity too good not to capture. ‘Transit oriented development’ as a concept seems in practice almost entirely fixated on trains as THE mode of public transport to be leveraged. Even if the said station is clearly little used, it’s the potential of that station to one day carry huge numbers of commuters which will help ‘solve’ our congestion problems – at least in the eyes of some starry-eyed dreamers.
While cities with extensive commuter rail networks – many built a hundred years ago or more – are blessed with preexisting infrastructure, it is also true they have grown up for a century around that infrastructure. Cities without it can face economic ruin by trying to introduce it later as an overlay. One look at Melbourne’s disastrous ‘suburban rail loop’ – which if ever completed will be the most expensive project ever in Australia’s history at $300billion to $400billion (from an initial estimate of $50billion) ought to be enough to scare anyone off. In Brisbane, the Cross River Rail – a 10klm underground rail extension with a price tag of nearly $20billion (original promise $5.4billion) – is a reminder closer to home that these are eye wateringly expensive undertakings.
Ironic then that a much lower cost and immensely more popular form of public transport never seems to get as much attention. Would you be surprised to learn that across south east Queensland, buses carry more than double the number of people than trains? In the fourth quarter of 2024-25, the bus network accounted for 31 million trips. Rail accounted for just 14 million – under half. Ferries, while a very enjoyable mode of public transport, provided a paltry 1.9 million trips. Trams – essentially the Gold Coast service – accounted for nearly 3.5 million trips.
Sydney is different. There, rail carries a touch more than buses – with 279 million annual rail trips versus 240 million annual bus trips. Very broadly, that’s close to a 50:50 split. Ignoring buses would discount half of the public transport trips across the region. (The iconic Sydney ferries ferry around 15 million trips annually, while the light rail is around 40 million trips). And in Melbourne, trains rule with 40% of public transport trips, while trams account for 35% and buses a quarter of trips.
Part of the explanation for the mode split in Brisbane is best illustrated by the routes. The rail network across Southeast Queensland is quite limited. It began life as mainly a freight network, and a fledgling one at that. Hence, the cost of retrofitting rail over an urban form that evolved mostly in the era of the convenient and affordable motor car is now prohibitively expensive.
The bus network by comparison looks more like the circulatory system of the human body – with arteries and veins all across the city.
Convenience wins every time. The bus network also caters for suburb-to-suburb trips in a way that trains cannot. Further, the bus routes can be changed as the city evolves, at relatively minor cost because they chiefly use the pre-existing road network. Now enter the Brisbane Metro – Jimmy Rees’ hilarious nomenclature aside. The limited initial Metro network is already proving popular – fast, electric, quiet and turning up every 5 minutes. Future network extension for the Metro is readily possible because it can turn corners and use the road space available (trains can do neither). The Metro has, in my view, a huge future in the region.
So why is it then that we tend to overlook the role of buses or the metro in our region, and continue with a preoccupation with rail? When we do this, we ignore roughly two thirds of the public transport network, in favour of the one third. Where’s the sense in that?
Instead, why aren’t we talking more often about transit-oriented development opportunities that work in with the bus network, bus stations and interchanges? Why not envision a future of electric, autonomous buses shuttling people around the city from suburban hub to suburban hub? And the major interchanges of that network are the future transit oriented centres of activity where development is concentrated with jobs, health care and education all catered for?
Is the train obsession just some legacy fantasy view tinged with images of Euro/UK stations, of puffing steam engines and Harry Potter vibes? I just don’t get it.
Oh and a post-script. The advent of 50c fares for public transport may have been heralded as a ‘congestion busting’ move but the reality is more benign. Our overall public transport use is back to where it was pre-covid, despite the addition of several hundred thousand more people in that time.
The increase for August 2025 compared with the previous year is perceptible, but only just. Keep in mind that the addition of all these public transport modes represents only around 8% of trips in southeast Queensland.
That subsidy now means that 95% of the cost of each and every trip is subsidised by the taxpayer. The 50c doesn’t even cover the costs of running the tap on and off infrastructure. The taxpayer subsidy is currently averaging around $19 per person per one way trip across all modes of public transport. For rail, it’s much higher at around $30 per person per one way trip. For buses it’s much less: around $6.
Another good reason to give buses a lot more attention.
Really, who cares? Like rail, buses cannot deliver people to their final destinations timely and efficiently unless the CBD is the target. Time for planners to rethink their slavish public transport agenda and deliver a functional road system resplendent with numerous river crossings of adequate proportion.
ReplyDeleteAgree
DeleteWhy is it one versus the other? Integrated transport systems allow for multimodal use from point A to point B.
ReplyDeleteAgree - better multimodal connections would be handu
Delete"Integrated transport system" does little for timeliness or efficiency required by people "with things to do". Great for school kids and retired (like me) ... but I'm yet to see a tradie hoping on at 3am in the morning with his toolbox to get to his site by 6.30am. So long as we're talking more public transport we're avoiding discussing the real elephant in the room ... the terrible transport infrastructure for private and commercial vehicles.
DeleteTransport oriented development is often proposed around any high-capacity transit station - be it for trains, trams, metros, buses, or ferries. Trains are where this happens most because they are the highest capacity of those modes, and they also tend to operate well beneath their maximum capacity. Yes, they only go to a more limited number of destinations, but those tend to be destinations where demand is the highest (normally the CBD).
ReplyDeleteAustralia's train patronage is also made artificially low because of our low density around these stations, which decreases the pedestrian catchment (which is the most likely group of people to catch a train). You mentioned having some bus stops as TOD hubs & local centres for multimodal interchanges - in Sydney, that's what many of the busiest train stations are (e.g. Chatswood, Hurstville, Strathfield). Connections to major hubs from there can be made via rail, while suburb-to-suburb journeys can be made by buses or active transport.
Also, the big kicker: per passenger, buses cost a *ton* more than trams and trains to operate (in Toronto ON CA, I know replacement buses for the streetcars cost $1 million extra per day to operate), and even electric ones are much worse for the environment than rail-based alternatives (because of microplastic pollution from the tyres).
The reason we all root for TOD around train stations is because that's where it makes the most sense.its as simple as that, really.
Oh also, you mentioned that buses can change their routes to match the development of the city. But when any type of transportation is good (be it railways, motorways, or busways), development naturally builds around them. There's plenty of evidence internationally that trains can handle this better than anything else (ignoring active transport), so that's generally where we should be concentrating our development
DeleteThe biggest reason people use trains is that they are reliable and speedy, at the expense of not going directly door to door like a bus and they will be walking to and from the train stations. Also developers like building around rails because bus routes can be changed overnight at a whim. If you can build offices and especially shopping centres around rail stations, then you are ahead.
ReplyDeleteFrom a technical standpoint. Rail-based or station systems have higher capacity than regular buses due to having bigger/longer vehicles. Costs for them are generally fixed regardless of the number of passengers carried. For a regular train line, if you double the number of services, the overall cost to provide the service may only increase by 50% or less. You are paying for track maintenance and station staff. For a regular bus service, costs are dominated by paying the bus driver. Double the service and the labour costs double.
There is no magic bullet. People have come up with 'trackless trams' which are like trams with train-like bogies with rubber wheels instead of metal. Due to the computer-controlled guidance to keep them to their lane, it was discovered that they required a reinforced roadbed to stop ruts from developing. The cost of doing this wasn't that much different to laying down tram/LRT tracks.
Buses are great, but their biggest problem is 'car-induced traffic congestion'. Buses can easily carry double the number of people than a regular lane of traffic, but not if they are stuck in traffic all the time. It will be slower to catch the bus than drive, even if there is a traffic jam. Delays lead to bunching of buses, which then makes things worse. This is fixable with actual traffic priority for buses and mandating speed and reliability targets.
I suspect traffic engineers would rather shoot themselves in the head than admit that traffic priority for buses would improve traffic flow.
You might be interested in this piece:
https://marcochitti.substack.com/p/down-with-the-brt-long-live-the-bus
All very well said, and Marco's article is definitely a good read
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