The Greens’ bid for City Hall has stepped up a gear, with mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan to announce an election commitment for 15 new high-frequency bus routes on Monday.
Should the Greens be successful in March’s local government election, a further 10 bus routes would be upgraded and 13 new bus and transit lanes would be installed on key bus corridors.
In what he described as Brisbane’s biggest expansion of bus services in decades, Sriranganathan said it was a solution to the city’s hub-and-spoke public transport model, which required many passengers to travel into the inner-city area before doubling back to a suburban destination.
The plan has been costed at $169 million a year – $142 million for the 15 new services and $27 million for the 10 upgraded routes.
“Thousands of residents have told us they’d like to catch a bus, but that the frequency, operating hours and coverage of Brisbane’s current services just isn’t good enough,” Sriranganathan said. “Why should Brisbane’s public transport system be so much worse than other developed cities?”
“This would be the biggest, most significant, expansion of public transport in most people’s lifetimes, filling major gaps in the network and giving more people the freedom to leave their car at home.”
Along with the 15 new high-frequency routes, existing routes 175, 192, 220, 235, 380 and 470 would be upgraded to high frequency, aligning them with Bus Upgrade Zone routes.
The 100, 196 and 444 BUZ routes would be extended, while route 390 would be extended and upgraded to high frequency.
Bus priority transport corridors would also be introduced on Kelvin Grove/Enoggera and Lutwyche/Gympie roads on the northside; Old Cleveland Road, Ipswich Road/Main Street, Logan Road, Mains Road, Stanley and Vulture streets, Montague Road and Lytton/Wynnum roads on the southside; and the Centenary Motorway, a new inner-west transitway via Sir Fred Schonell Drive and the UQ campus, Coronation Drive and Moggill Road on the westside.
Generally, bus priority would take the form of T2 lanes on four-lane roads, with dedicated bus lanes on six-lane roads, with some adjustments based on local conditions.
https://preview.redd.it/j45cmtilsj5c1.png?width=1354&format=png&auto=webp&s=537095f4393d27dc8c2a13b1bbe1a03a7a8adea4
Sriranganathan said proposals such as the Gympie Road bypass tunnel, which has the support of both the Labor state government and the LNP administration in City Hall, would do little to alleviate traffic on Brisbane roads.
“Right now, the major parties’ main response to traffic congestion is to waste billions building more car tunnels and widening intersections, but all the evidence tells us that improving public transport should be the priority, and that building more roads creates more traffic,” he said.
“Wasting $9 billion on a tunnel under Gympie Road is a ludicrous idea when we could revolutionise public transport coverage and access for a fraction of that price.”
While the Greens vote has surged in Brisbane, the party remains an underdog in the March election, with the lord mayoral race a three-way contest between Sriranganathan, incumbent Adrian Schrinner (LNP) and Labor’s Tracey Price.
The Greens’ election commitment was given to this masthead on an embargoed basis, meaning comment from third parties could not be sought.
The dedicated bus lanes are probably far more important than the upgraded services. The issue with Brisbane buses is not so much their frequency as it is their unreliability. A bus could be anywhere between five minutes early or ten minutes late, if it even shows up at all, subject to the conditions of traffic bottlenecks on major roads.
Higher frequency is good though if they can afford to run them. Maybe cancelling that new toll road could save the budget some cash on that front.
The new routes do fix one of the major issues with Brisbane’s transit, which is that everything goes through the city or Cultural Centre. Want a bus from one suburb to another? No. Go to King George Square first!
Yeah I agree new routes are needed. Some sort of circle route around the suburbs might be useful. But I also think the major issue with the hub-and-spoke model could be addressed with better reliability and scheduling of services - the main problem is that transfers are unreliable and can leave you waiting for like 20 mins if your connecting bus is delayed. Removing bus traffic from car traffic could help to streamline the present model and make it actually minimally viable.
Both are necessary but I feel the fundamental congestion problem needs to be fixed before we expand the system further.
Frequency is still good because it allows you to chain journeys.
Say you only have a half hourly bus service.
You are catching a bus to the city, but want to make a pit stop at a business on the way for an errand. If you make that pit stop, you are committed to spending 30 mins at the business till you can resume on the following bus, even if your errand will only take 10 mins. you're forced to waste 20 mins.
Furthermore, even if your reliability is really good, its not possible to make every connection in a grid network timed transfer.
But once buses start operating every 10-15 mins, you gain so much extra flexibility.
You're right that the T3 lanes/bus lanes are actually the most important and best value-for-money element of this initiative, but it's hard to get the general public interested in and excited about reallocating road space.
The T2 lanes barely get enforced. I filter past so many single person cars down mains road and onto the Nathan up ramp, I can't imagine how frustrating that would be to the bus drivers.
"Not Just Bikes" on YouTube has a great benchmark for wether or not a city has effective public transport and it's simple as this;
> Do your buses get stuck in traffic?
and if they are running early, they dont wait around, they just leave early to avoid being late to the next one. So even if you arrive on time you never know if you bus will even come. What would be great would be some kind of live GPS monitoring app like uber has for its drivers. see if the bus that rocked up 15 minutes late was the one you expected or the next one running early.
The Translink phone app already has this capability -- but I also like the "Transit" app because you can schedule a push notification when your bus is 5/10/xx minutes away as per the GPS tracker.
Id love it if the Greens went in hard with a genuine alternative to the Northern toll tunnel.
Eg say that they would do a driverless metro under Gympie Road instead, lob that bomb and get the public talking about it, then watch the incumbent tie themselves in Knotts trying to explain why a tollway is better lol.
I would say a fair few voters would actually prefer a project like that, The problem is neither liberal or labor are going to give us it.
> “Why should Brisbane’s public transport system be so much worse than other developed cities?”
To be fair, many other developed cities have higher density in inner suburban areas which help support better public transport. Are the Greens going to allow higher density housing in places like Paddington and Red Hill that are a Stone’s throw away from the CBD and would help support more efficient public transport use? I mean some of these suburbs are even walking distance to the CBD!
> “This would be the biggest, most significant, expansion of public transport in most people’s lifetimes, filling major gaps in the network and giving more people the freedom to leave their car at home.”
Better access to more frequent busses is great but would this really be a more significant expansion in public transport than say, the Gold Coast or Redcliffe train lines?
It's all very well and good to demand more buses and greater frequency and longer routes, but without being able to recruit drivers they can't even service their current routes. The conditions are poor, the pay is bad, Brisbane drivers are lunatics, and the buses are filled with meth addicts, hobos, generally abusive people, and the drivers are at risk of being set on fire. Until they get more security, nobody in their right mind would sign up to be a Brisbane bus driver particularly on the 196 West End to the Valley methylamphetamine express.
If they spend some of this money on guards, and threw the riff raff out on the streets, it would do a lot to get people back on public transport.
Maybe we don't need more busses, just get more people back on them.
"Right now, the major parties’ main response to traffic congestion is to waste billions building more car tunnels and widening intersections, but all the evidence tells us that improving public transport should be the priority, and that building more roads creates more traffic"
Put that on a plague.
We have known for the better part of a century that expanding roadway capacity makes traffic worse, not better. Induced demand doesn't magically stop working because you put your new lanes underground or because you believe hard enough that this time is different, despite all evidence to the contrary. The only proven way to reduce congestion is to make more efficient modes more attractive so people switch.
Road space is limited. If your road is congested, swapping a lane for cars that carries 1,000-2,800 people per hour for a bus lane that carries 4,000-8,000 people per hour is a no-brainer.
I dunno about that, I had a real problem with my weight making my belt really tight. So I punched a few extra belt holes further out, and it wasn't tight for like 6 months. Then I just punched a few more holes, and it's been sweet for a week now. Seems like I've solved my eating problem.
Incredible. Finally someone actually says what has been obvious to anyone with a bit of transport knowledge, and proposes a realistic, doable proposal which addresses the issue. Route 369 gets the upgrade it deserves. More bus frequency to serve KP. Bus lanes on stroads. More crosstown service for people who aren't commuters.
If I would like to propose one thing, maybe splitting the GCL into 4 contiguous crosstown routes and integrating it into this new proposal? Would prevent the issue of compounding delays.
Good on ya, Jonno!
yes, yes, fucking yes.
so many good route options
so many journeys that take an hour plus that would be halved at least.
my journey to work is currently 45 minutes, in a car you make that journey in less than 15 minutes.
Wonder if the greens have bothered to show how much could be saved on road wear and tear, upgrades, less traffic jams and the rest of it, due to less traffic and more peoe using Public Transport.
It would certainly show how the increase in the public transport budget can be offset
Yeah over the long run it would certainly save millions on road resurfacing, plus the flow-on economic costs of traffic congestion etc. The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings. It'd be nice if some academics could put some time into researching that sort of stuff.
Excuse my ignorance I’ve been away for a while!
I always feel Green Party policies best reflect my own beliefs but often don’t have the talent on board to implement their manifesto.
Do we have the talent on board to turn these ideas into reality.
Please don’t take offence as I know this job can’t be easy.
They've certainly been getting better at it as the party has grown and legitimised. Labor and LNP have the funds to pay for this stuff, and finally the greens are getting to that point.
Good question Dave!
Basically, when Greens campaigns are developing policies and proposed initiatives prior to an election, most of the work is being done by volunteers, perhaps with a little bit of research support from a couple of staffers in the offices of elected Greens reps. But if the Greens win enough seats to take control of a jurisdiction (e.g. Brisbane City Council) we would then have control over a large public service with heaps of subject matter experts who'd be able to implement the ideas we've proposed during the election campaign.
So yes, I think the talent is there.
Have the Greens spent much time talking to people who either:
A) don't live in the inner suburbs?
B) are marginal voters?
There are very few people who are not already public transport users who will be swayed by the promise of more things that they typically despise as a personal transport option.
There's a very good reason why world cities have invested so heavily in rail infrastructure.
Take the TBMs dedicated to making roads and put them to use building a decent underground metro.
Would you rather they proposed something for Council election which they had absolutely no ability to deliver, rather than something which they would have some ability to deliver?
That's particularly reductive. I'd rather they proposed something that had strategic vision and long term planning improvements behind it.
It's perfectly possible to bring in a rail link within 4 years. It's also possible to build high speed feeder roads with few exits to remove coastal peak hour traffic from surface roads (southern Brisbane has some of this).
Buses require significant additional infrastructure, from road lanes (see Gympie road), interchanges, scheduling, etc. They, unlike other solutions, are often so completely impractical that they are particularly hard to demonstrate good value in terms of value over the life of the bus vs a larger and longer term transport solution.
Focusing on adding high density housing precicts where community, amenity, and infrastructure come together would be a better start to both housing and transport pressure. Expanding the bus network.is a solution they few, if any, have recognised as being of benefit or desired. And since we are talking about an election platform, what's the point of running on a platform few want?
Alright.
Where in Brisbane (BCC area, because election context) could we build a train line within four years for under $200 million?
Doomben line extension, very maybe?
---
In every public transport system, everywhere in the world, you are going to have buses serving routes and areas that rail lines can't or don't yet serve. That we might be in a position to build rail somewhere sometime in the future is no argument to not run a good quality bus service there today.
The point is to have a frequent network that covers the city. If you look at the State Government's SEQ regional transport plan for 2041 they include a bunch of corridors which aren't currently frequent (many of course are outside BCC, but many inside BCC too). It averages out to a couple a year across SEQ.
We can quibble about priorities and which corridors deserve it more and all that. Goodness knows I don't necessarily agree with the specifics of every route the Greens are proposing here. But as they note, we've seen ~no new BUZ-standard routes in BCC since the Maroon Glider, almost a decade now. We did have a big wave of upgrades the prior decade, of course. It's time to make a start on some more.
Again, the point is to have a frequent network that covers the city. Buses, trains, trams, ferries, whatever. Frequent service - even the humble bus - is better than infrequent service. And by all means once the patronage is there, we should be talking about upgrades to higher capacity modes.
---
btw, I believe Gympie Rd is taking forever because there's a squillion services buried under what was the parking lane. It's easy to rip up a parking lane to do works, not so much a bus lane. And so there's been a coördination nightmare in making sure all of that's in good condition etc.
But I also think there's a bit of a difference between what's happening with Gympie Rd, and changing general traffic lanes into peak-hour T2 or T3 lanes. In the latter case, the lane already carries buses and other traffic, we're just excluding single-occupant cars a couple of hours each day to give buses and multi-occupant cars a better run.
>how much could be saved on road wear and tear, upgrades,
Not how it works. It would cost them way more to maintain. Road damage is a function of the [fourth power law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law). Running a shitload of lightweight vehicles is much, much better for the road surface than running one heavy vehicle over it. Especially considering council buses are usually only dual axle with the exception of bendy buses and the extra long busses.
For example a 2 tonne car with two axles = 1^(4) = 1.
10 tonne bus with two axles = 5^(4) = 625
For context the maximum weight of our Volgren-bodied Volvo B8RLE buses are a hair over 19 tonnes in two axle form, when loaded at capacity with 80 people. According to the Forth Power Law, you'd need to drive 8 *thousand* 2 tonne cars in the same spot to do the same amount of wear as a council bus at capacity. Even assuming a generous partially loaded 14 tonne weight you're still looking at a little under 2500 cars.
Its probably more the "upgrades" side of things.
Eg how often do intersections get upgraded to increase throughput for cars?
If public transport options are improved, the growth in traffic volumes is subdued, so you might Only have to upgrade every 30 years not every 15-20.
I mean does it really matter? If you want bus specific infrastructure you're still going to be spending a lot of time and money on road infrastructure. That's not to point out that buses are subsidised because they don't make enough money from fares.
Like more public transport is fine but it's not exactly a golden ticket to saving millions.
I don't think it's about saving millions, but spending efficiently for enabling local economy and societal mobility. Realistically public transport shouldn't need to "make enough money from fares" because they're a net positive for the economy.
Fair fair! Interesting to see the physics constraints of supporting public transport upgrades.
I would've thought the rear wheels of the buses were double, or does that not make a significant difference and weight needs to be distributed lengthwise rather than more widely?
The single vs double wheel is a minute enough difference that we don't bother accounting for it. Each axle passing over a section of pavement causes a loading cycle of the pavement flexing. Spreading that load cycle through a 2nd tire double the contact area, but the area of pavement and subgrade resisting the load of each tire spreads out in a zone of influence that overlaps with the other tire.
Personal commuter vehicles contribute an extremely small amount to damage to roads requiring things like resurfacing. So the cost saving does not exist there.
Increasing bus frequency, axle loads will drastically increase maintenance requirements on roads.
The real benefits are to air quality, noise pollution and less traffic. Which while intangible cost wise are important to liveability of the city.
Business cases for each project do assign a $ amount to these benefits (air quality, noise pollution and less traffic delays etc.) and consider this as part of the justification for allocating funds. So, while they are intangible, they are still standardised, quantifiable, and considered for every project. Reduced traffic / travel times are often the largest benefit in a cost-benefit analysis for transport infrastructure projects.
Like the plan through I would like to see the 61 Glider be extended to Enoggera Station as it can connect with trains plus it has a Bus Interchange and rest area for drivers.
you’ve got my vote if you put wheel covers on them and call it a Metro
but seriously, why does Council and the State of Queensland find this so hard? the money spent on roads is absurd
I had a look at the map, the only thing that stuck out to me is the Old Northern Road corridor (from Ennoggera to Albany creek) is probably the biggest gap in the plan)
I like the overall logic of having several east west routes that form a sort of grid, intersecting with existing BUZ routes and rail lines, it's just that the western part of the "grid" is incomplete without a frequent bus along that road.
But overall it's actually a really good proposal for improving the coverage of the system. I feel most recent council PT initiatives have always skewed towards the inner suburbs. This plan addresses that imbalance.
Yeah I think this partly reflects the fact that our plan is mostly focussed on the Brisbane City Council area, but if we got some Greens elected into Moreton Bay Regional Council (which covers the Albany Creek area) we could definitely look at collaborating on some improved services along that corridor too.
That's kind of how political parties work outside of ones specifically targeted at single-issue voters.
No party will ever encompass every policy that you personally would like to see. In this case, regardless of the Green's position on GMO's ([which is awful](https://greens.org.au/policies/genetically-modified-organisms)) the Brisbane City Council doesn't actually have the ability to translate that position into an actionable policy. So it's completely harmless rhetoric. Policies are what actually effect people's lives, not rhetoric.
Good policies mixed with stupid but ultimately harmless rhetoric is probably about as good as you're ever going to get from politics unfortunately. Nobody is going to map your personal political beliefs one-for-one unless you run yourself.
If people actually read Greens policy rather than focus on deflective sound bites of meaningless nothing, they’d know they’ve been advocating for public transport expansions for years.
As a Green member I agree with the above comment.
Far too often they're more interested in pushing fringe issues.
I get they have the ability to do many things at once but seeing first hand in meetings there's factions in the greens that want nothing more than to be outrageous
I see very few fringe issues, other than what people insist they push.
I have no doubt the fringe issues get raised within the party meetings. That’s where they should come out and be debated, that’s what the party meetings are for. The other parties do exactly the same in their meetings…discuss fringe issues that more radical members bring forward.
I get a bit tired of this focus on fringe issues whenever good policy is brought forward. This is part of that shitty bar that doesn’t exist for the other parties. Every time something the Greens do or propose that is good, it’s battered by comments like the one above.
I vote Greens, but they do have many fringe issues that they really do push. Anti-nuclear is their biggest one, but their anti-Australia/monarchy stuff, the anti-GMO things, etc. Even Max’s weird insistence on airplane noise being an issue.
Expanded public transport, expanded healthcare to dental and mental, closing tax loopholes, preventing new fossil fuel projects, etc. are why I vote for them, and they’re not going to lose my vote over fringe issues, but I do wish they’d drop them to make themselves more electable.
Yeah, I hear it. There are fringe issues.
I apply the same bar to them as I do the other parties, in that they all have points that I either don’t agree with or are fringe. I then look at how problematic they are. The biggest problems I have with the Greens are a couple of policies on the national level, such as the naivety on defence and how fast they think we can complete the energy transition, both of which I think they’d find they’d have to drop pretty quickly.
I’m not concerned with the vegan, gay, GMO, airplane noise, all those are only ever used as reasons not to vote Green and they’re either just not big things or they’re the right thing to do. Anti Australia I don’t see, what do you mean by that?
Such as Bandt after the last election removing the Australian flag from behind him while he gave his speech, and how fast he was after Lizzy 2 died to call for a Republic referendum. The Greens are keenly aware that we’re a settler country with a problematic past and their leader is quite keen on doing something about that rather than just ignoring it, which is what the general public would want to do.
Well the Queen a few of us aren’t going to be broken hearted about and the same probably stands for the flag but I take your point in it, those optics aren’t great. That referendum would be fine as well. I think you’re overplaying the affection sone of us have as a whole for the Crown. Its strength lies in the oversight within the Westminster system, nothing else. If we could replace the Crown oversight with something just as effective I’m happy for all three to be replaced asap.
Still, so far, the policy platform, the housing fight they’ve put up, the fact that’s still better than the two majors has kept my vote for them and it would be nice if we started giving them consideration for the good they’re doing and spent less time deflecting or finding reasons to run them down.
Like I said, I vote for them.
But I do wish they’d drop such controversial issues that only serve to lower their votes. Greens don’t need to be pro-nuclear, just not anti, that’d win votes. Greens don’t need to be pro-GMO, just not anti, that’d win votes.
And while the Republic should be debated soon as the topic has been on hold since the 90s due to waiting out Lizzy’s reign, it probably wouldn’t hurt if the Greens took a more “Australia is great we should have our own leadership” rather than “Colonisation has been a disaster for Australia and we should leave behind its legacy” (which is a popular statement to some but extremely unpopular to others).
A good example for how Greens should do things is like their stance on veganism. They obviously approve of it, but they’re not taking any major actions against the meat industry and aren’t making it an issue to vote on. It’s a thumbs up but a purely neutral stance. Greens could drop their negative attitudes towards nuclear but just never put forward anything positive towards it either.
As for the nuclear one, yeah, we should have been serious about that discussion ages ago, but I recall it being far more nationally driven than just the Greens. Nuclear power along with the Franklin Dam polarised this country and forever changed the way we did the environment here, both with protest and governance.
That discussion is done now, it’s pretty obvious we can make that transition without it now.
Maybe dropping some of the controversy might help their bottom line vote. I don’t know, the prejudices run deep. They’re a very convenient outlet for views people otherwise wouldn’t want to show.
Australia has never had a nuclear power plant and has almost no domestic nuclear industry. Labor and LNP have had 60 years to build nuclear and haven't built any. The big nuclear push fizzled out decades before the Greens formed.
Being anti-nuclear isn't universal, but it is a mainstream position.
It’s about perspective really. Green parties should not be anti-nuclear in a fossil fuel economy. So anti-nuclear beliefs, relative to typical environmentalist attitudes, is fringe. However yes, relative to mainstream politics, it is more default, especially Australian mainstream.
This is one example.
"Note that the Brisbane Renters Alliance calls for a 'soft limit' on rental increases, suggesting that rents should only be allowed to increase by 1% per annum unless major improvements are made to a property. Other groups, such as the Queensland Greens, have called for rent limits to be capped at CPI (the [**Consumer Price Index**](https://www.abs.gov.au/methodologies/consumer-price-index-australia-methodology/mar-2021)) which is a measure of inflation that's currently sitting at around 1.1% per year. "
It’s a genuine reflection of how stupid we are. Drags in ‘GMOs’ from nowhere (we know it’s the ‘woke’ criticism again) but misses the point that PT improvements and development has been a cornerstone of Green policy for years.
Doesn’t help that the articles
says ‘radical’ but still. This is why we get the governments and policy that we do, when we could do so much better.
What? Go on Greens website it’s one of their policies.
I understand greens have been pro PT for a while, I think that’s one of their best policies!
I’m just saying they have lots of great policies, and some batshit ones too
>What? Go on Greens website
The policy is actually a moratorium and investigation. Their position is that they are researched and labelled correctly. What’s the problem with that, where is that insane? It’s a terrific but unnecessary sound bite in your comment though. Why did you add it? What’s it got to do with public transport?
>I understand…
Do you? Your comment sounded as if they were finally doing something right. Not the comment of someone who understands their history.
>some batshit ones
Go on.
“Researched” ?!? Yeah this anti-science take is my problem. GMOs have already been researched with conclusive and unanimous scientific agreement that they are safe.
It’s the same as saying we shouldn’t be bringing more renewables online and keep using coal until we have more research that global warming is actually real.
More “research” is not needed. we know the answer. Anyone who disagrees with that, and the *hundreds* of Nobel laureates who petitioned for GMOs is simply anti-science and I have no patience for such a take
The Greens as a group do have a policy about GMOs especially foods that is way over cautious (ie their “precautionary principle” which delays innovation for proof that might never satisfy them).
You’re basically just trying to replace one issue with another, but single issue voting is just as stupid as mindlessly believing news articles rather than reading honest analysis of policy.
No they didn’t. They made comment about the party holistically but even praised this policy. You’re more interested in focusing on a single policy and got upset with them for pointing out that the party isn’t going to win on a single issue.
You’re right you’re not “basically” doing it, you’re *literally* doing it.
>They made comment about the party holistically
They said that if the Greens did more of this (which they do) *and less insane things* like opposing GMO *which is literally replacing one issue with another*
>Got upset
Where did I get upset? I pointed out use of deflection, bluntly.
>Pointed out the party isn’t going to win on a single issue.
No, they emphasised other policies which they think costs the Greens, by *replacing one issue with another*.
Now, what single policy am I interested in focusing on more?
They made the comment that if the Greens focused on policies like transport that was generally seen as beneficial, and less on policies like their hardline questionable stance on GMO foods, they’d be much more likely to form government. It’s a blanket statement with individual examples.
*You* then got upset that they dared to make such a comment instead of only focusing on the *good policy*.
>focused on policies like transport….and less on policies like their…stance on GMO
They do, though. We hear far more about transport and energy production policies from the Greens than we do about GMO. It’s one of their fringe topics, one that’s…usually pulled in to deflect from the good work the party does. Questionable is based on opinion there, as well, I’ve read their policy on it, I’m fine with it and I understand it’s going through some review at this time.
>It’s a blanket statement
It’s also a deflection. It’s an unnecessary one, which shines further unnecessary bad light. Not only that, the claim the Greens push insane policies over good ones is false.
>*You* then got upset
You’ll run with this regardless, but no, I’m not upset about it. I am a bit tired of it though, because on a general basis it’s damaging our society. Good things are run down by bad. It’s not even true.
https://greens.org.au/policies/genetically-modified-organisms
Actual Greens (though not related to a Local Election, nor should it, GMO are not a Local Council problem.)
>A moratorium on the further release of GMOs into the environment until there is an adequate scientific understanding of their long term impact on the environment, human and animal health. This includes the **removal as far as possible of GMOs from Australian agriculture** while the moratorium is in place.
Their first aim in relation to GMO's is batshit insane (and pretty much impossible.)
Yes they have, which is great. Unfortunately they’ve also been anti GMO for years too which is bonkers. If they got rid of that policy they’d win a lot more support
>unfortunately they’ve also been anti GMO…which is bonkers…
See my comment above, they want them thorough researched and labelled. That’s not an insane position to take. I want that as well. I don’t oppose the use of GMO, but I want it under strict regulation.
They want them banned until some fantasy point in the future pending "Research". This is not what you're saying.
Trouble is, the research is done, the fear is baseless, and what they actually want is GMO's banned and demonised for no rational reason - because, they HAVE been researched, the research is finished, and the hippies are still bein anti-scientific by fighting them.
>Until some fantasy point in the future
Rhetorical, and yes, each GMO should be tested. That’s not radical, nor is the fact that the time line needs to be left open, because more GMOs will become available in the future. Since that’s in the future, we don’t know when that will be. I assume that’s what you’re speculating?
>The research is done
Not on GMOs that haven’t been introduced yet.
>The hippies
Now we are getting to the crux of your prejudice.
Now you’ve waxed lyrical about the national policy deflection, what about the local PT policy?
It's generally the reason they only get my second preference behind a reasonable independent (in the unlikely event I have one) or a Hemp party protest vote.
If I have a good feeling about a specific ALP candidate they might be a coin toss. Last Fed and State Election the Green member was just a placeholder, no information on their Candidate listing and just a generic response when I emailed them.. The only person to give me a good personal reply was the HEMP party member... though I understand that the volume of requests for her was likely lower.
If people did some research on other cities/states/countries that have enacted some of the greens policies they would also know that they greens policies sound good in practice but rarely work out.
Rent caps, a well known greens policy, is a perfect example of this.
Bullshit. Rent caps work where applied correctly.
There’s a view pushed by investors that it discourages investment, but it’s a view only. More to the point it hasn’t been tested in our market, and the fact those in our market frightened about it the most are investors, real estates and landlords, I get the feeling it’s probably a good policy.
Anyway, the only evidence we’ve got for the Greens being in power was the Gillard Government which passed more effective bills than any other, including the NDIS and NBN which the Coalition fucked, that world class carbon trading scheme which the Coalition fucked and the work they’re doing with the current government like the concessions they gained through the housing policies.
But yeah, something something research something other countries something vague something rarely work out.
It’s not so much that it would discourage investment than that it would likely encourage divestment. Landlords selling off their rental properties because their potential ROI has been capped might sound great for high income renters who are in the market to buy for themselves, but it pushes low income renters with no hope of buying out of the residential property market entirely. If the Greens want to help those struggling to pay rent, it seems like rent caps have it entirely backward by supporting higher income renters over lower income renters.
>likely encourage divestment
If so, that can only do one thing..drag house prices and therefore rents further downwards.
>great for high income renters
*If it happened*, great for anyone either entering this market, or renting, because their rent is either capped or lower
>pushes low income renters
That’s an assumption. It’s more likely that, *if that divestment occurred,* rents would begin to lower. None of them are selling their properties unless they have to, because they’ve got loans to service and the investment to consider.
>it *seems like* rent caps have it backwards
We don’t know, we haven’t tested them here, you admit that yourself with the indented, but it’s probably likely they don’t. Higher income renters don’t care and aren’t competing for the same housing. Most people with a high enough income and want stability aren’t renting out of choice.
Anyway, forget the deflections and stick to both the evidence and the topic, that is, they have proven their ability to govern well, and this policy is a good one, reflective of the Greens long time stance on improving public transport.
>We don’t know, we haven’t tested them here
The policy has been tested around the world and in most cases it's a failure. Landlords begin to discriminate on who they perceive to have the most stable life/income i.e wealthy high income people. It also reduces investment and to an extent encourages divestment from rental properties (aka less apartments on the market to rent).
The only semi sucessful case of rent control is in Vienna and that's because they didn't really implement rent control. Essentially the government had a policy of fixing old privately owned units (pre 1945 buildings) with public money, so in an effort to prevent landlords from making money off that they implemented rent control on only pre 1945 buildings.
All other buildings in Vienna aren't on rent control.
The real reason Vienna has cheap rents is because the government has a massive surplus of public housing. This keeps the rent of post 1945 buildings down since people can live in the public housing cheaply.
Rent control has failed in pretty much every city other than Vienna.
Tl:DR Don't bother with rent control, just increase the supply of apartments/houses.
How would it drag rents down? Landlords selling would decrease the supply of rental properties overall. Not sure how that would decrease rental costs. No one will rent a property on a loss so they’re more likely to just sell, and it’s not clear that this influx of supply into the buyers market will cause house prices to fall sufficiently far to allow low income renters to buy into the market. So, they’re stuck with renting, but with fewer rental properties available it will likely get harder to find a home.
If the basis for your support for this policy is simply “we don’t really know but it might work”, I’m not sure I’m interested in testing an experimental policy idea that has the potential to backfire tremendously. As a lower income renter myself I am genuinely concerned that my landlord selling would leave me ultimately homeless in the current market. And if we implement policies that render renting financially insolvent for landlords with interest rates the way they are, why wouldn’t they all just sell?
The Greens have not proven their ability to govern well because they have never governed. Meanwhile Labor has a solid policy platform to increase housing supply and density through zoning reform and addressing vacant properties. Don’t get me wrong - I’ll pref Green over LNP any day obviously, but let’s not get carried away with the Greens’ promises to fix everything in a single term.
Sometimes I just want a party that advocates for the environment and public transport without calling for the genocide of the Jewish people or opposing vaccination and 5G.
>Opposing vaccination and 5G
[From their policy platform](https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-05/Greens-2022-Policy-Platform--Services--Nbn.pdf)
‘The Greens are committed to a…NBN that uses FTTP, FTTC and *5G Fixed Wireless*….’
[From their policy document](https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-05/Greens-2022-Policy-Platform--Services--Nbn.pdf)
‘The Greens will invest to establish a publicly owned mRNA vaccine production facility in Australia…
>calling for the genocide of the Jewish people
I know they have asked for a ceasefire in Gaza, but I need to see where they’re calling for the genocide of Jewish people.
A great way to improve roads for the people who need to drive cars is to remove a significant number of motorists who don't actually need or want to sit in traffic.
When my commute was 20m driving cross town or 1h20 because of hub/spoke public transport you know which one I was choosing. If everyone like me in that situation had a good public transport option the remaining people whose jobs/lifestyle/disability actually requires driving will have an easier time driving. Parking would be less competitive and costly tolls would be less necessary.
I'm excited for this, but I expect all the car-supremacists will go frothing mad at the idea the city would take an evidence based approach to improving their access to roadways.
Didn't trump get in on a similar campaign strategy? Though the two are widely different (and mostly opposite) "for the lulz" is a very bad way to play politics.
Perhaps but A) Brisbane City Council and the world's largest economy are not the same thing and B) Trump wouldn't have won if the US presidential electoral system was remotely fair. He lost the popular vote by a long way.
It’s actually ideas like this that we need to improve Brisbane traffic.
Living through the nightmare that is the Indooroopilly roundabout upgrade at a quarter of $1 billion for one intersection doesn’t feel like the way.
Tbh if they build a bus lane along Gympie Road (which is planned to Bracken Ridge) the tunnel is of no use. I don’t know about the other areas, but the hills really need buses to be able to access train stations- so Eatons Hill to Banyo is a nice thing. They should try to reduce traffic in Gympie Road rather than encouraging it.
Taking the train is faster to get to the city by car for my outer city suburb, which is fortunate cause the fastest way is to drive to the station park n ride and take the train, so the PT usage rate in my suburb is fair especially for city commuters.
Anyway, nice job.
I’m sure all of us in each suburb have their own opinions on relevant bus routes, but I’ll throw mine in here:
4017 needs better services. My eldest could only get a bus from wherever they were to Broken Fridge (Gawain road) and had to literally walk to Brighton - a 90min walk - in upper 30° temps and ultra-high UV. There needs to be local circle routes in each suburb so you can connect with these major routes.
For example, a Sandgate-Brighton shuttle, sharing a stop at BRHS which serves BR and Bald hills, which shares stops at BRT with fitzgibbon and taigum, and Bunnings carseldine for strathpine and brendale …etc.
Yes, a huge investment but my god would it improve traffic. Imagine being able to just walk for five minutes to your nearest stop and go anywhere within an hour or so.
Agreed. This is a great proposal, and I hope we see it in action, but I think the network could also use very localised services that improve connectivity across a few neighbouring suburbs as well.
At the moment I think it’s true for most areas that it’s extremely difficult/nigh impossible to get to at least one suburb in your immediate vicinity via PT. There’s a lot in this proposal to address some of those gaps, but I think localised services creating a loop between major transport hubs and shopping precincts/schools etc. would go a long way.
I would never vote Green, but I do like this policy. Although I’ve also been recently convinced that public transport should be free, especially given that fare revenue only makes 10% of Translink’s income.
10% seemed low to me so I went looking for the [source](https://www.publications.qld.gov.au/ckan-publications-attachments-prod/resources/51f061db-e198-41b1-8101-660a134c3c41/cspw-29-2022-2023-annual-report_v2.pdf?ETag=b915cdd08b253e75b4248ff44b7fcecb). On page 11 there it's visible, so the 10% value is true! Unfortunately, it is misleading.
The vast majority of the revenue (82%) is just coming straight from the state government as appropriated funding. So if the state government contributed less to Translink, the user charges and fees share would increase.
Not saying that I disagree with the overall viewpoint that public transport should drive public good. If you consider for the last financial year that the state government could've spent 7.6b on Translink (versus the 6.3b they did spend) and public transport would be free across the state, it does seem like a small cost.
Exactly! And it's a big boon to people who need it most. Basically if you have less money, you live further out of cities and it costs more to use it.
Some proponents of free transport also think there are savings from not having to wait for people to do ticketing and for us the GoCard infrastructure.
Public transport fares are so backwards to me.
The government spends money subsidising a service because it provides positive externalities. The more people that use the service, the more benefits it provides to society. Additionally, the more people that use the service, the cheaper the service is overall due to economies of scale.
Yet instead of removing barriers to using public transport they force people to pay for 10% of the service their taxes are already paying 90% of.
I went looking for a figure a while ago on how much they actually spend on enforcing fares but couldn't find it. Would not be surprised if they spent a large chunk of fare revenue on enforcing fares. I love bureaucracy.
I think the part you're missing, and I understand that it's hard to comprehend, but people really, **really**, dislike the idea of a group different to them getting something for free.
Free public transport is not relevant to a large, politically active, well connected and wealthy section of our society. They would never consider taking public transport and would be loathe to subsidising it for others with tax dollars they believe they unequally contribute to (and in doing so, they believe they have a greater say in allocating).
Unfortunately, I think democracy is the issue that causes the backwardness you are identifying.
But for me the subsidy is 10% because the network is inefficient and the design isn't useful to many
Other countries that have similar social safety nets to Australia can achieve 30-50% cost recovery
The 10% figure holds in other developed countries.
And there is economic benefit and efficiency to making it free. Recovering costs from users isn't always the best idea as people who have to travel further are often living in those locations because they're economically disadvantaged to start.
https://www.transitwiki.org/TransitWiki/index.php/Farebox_Recovery_Ratio
Really?
The ones hovering around 10% are a few US cities.
Melbourne achieves 30%
Auckland 44%
The greens have some decent proposals but they get lost in the fringe issues that people don’t care about.
My main issue with them is I’m not confident they could manage a budget. They have lots of ideas to make stuff free and do all these new things but no plan I can find of how they will be paid for or what will be cut in place of these other shiny new ideas.
As long as Schrinner is gone then I’m happy and I have my doubts on whether the greens could be an effective council as a replacement though.
If you vote in a bunch of Greens, it's not like all the accountants, economists and financial managers who work in the Brisbane City Council are going to suddenly cease to exist. The budget would still be prepared by experts, with advice from Greens politicians about what their priorities are.
But let's also remember that the Greens have been in shared government in the ACT for several years now (including holding ministerial portfolios). And although there are lots of very legitimate criticisms of Canberra in the federal political context, it's not like things in the ACT are demonstrably worse than other Australian jurisdictions.
Their plans are budgeted like other political parties. This is a classic media scare tactic. There are not many places where Australia has had greens in control at any level but it's not like Byron Bay council has gone bankrupt or something.
The focus of the media on these fringe issues really seems like an intentional strategy to delegitimise the party's sensible policies. Just ignore the noise and actually read the policies they focus on at their website. There really isn't that much on fringe woke shit.
I do like some of their policies and they make sense. They’re big on making public transport more accessible etc which makes sense to me as I’d use it more often if it was easier to use and we need to get people off the roads to help ease congestion. They have a few other things I like as well.
Again my main issue is I guess I’ve never seen them have that responsibility of managing an actual government so I’m not sure how they’d go with it is all.
>Their plans are budgeted like other political parties.
No they aren't. As Sri admits;
>The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings.
>>Their plans are budgeted like other political parties.
>No they aren't. As Sri admits;
>>The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings.
Ok there is some nuance here I guess. The costs and revenues for the government are obviously calculated otherwise where do these numbers in the article come from? So in that sense - "where will they get the money?" doesnt make sense. They have at least costed it.
In terms of wider economic benefits and rationale that is a lot harder to quantity as you say. So I take your point but I don't think this is what the average punter is thinking or what the media is implying.
> The costs and revenues for the government are obviously calculated otherwise where do these numbers in the article come from? So in that sense - "where will they get the money?" doesnt make sense. They have at least costed it.
Costing the policy and being able to pay for it are two entirely different - and both sensible to ask - questions. I can cost up a Ferrari but I'm not likely to be able to raise the money to pay for it.
I feel like you underestimate how many people in the public service are actually keeping things running. The elected officials typically aren't in excel balancing the budgets themselves, there's public servants whose job is to take policy and work it into actionable budgeted steps.
>The plan has been costed at $169 million a year
Wonder what programs Sri plans to axe to pay for it, or what rates he intends to raise.
It's always easy to throw grand plans around when you have no prospect of holding any power or possibility to have your bluff called on actually needing to implement them.
We've been pretty up-front that we would axe major road-widening projects and intersection expansion projects that are geared towards carrying more cars - and of course not proceeding with the $8 billion+ Gympie Road tunnel. $169 million/year is a fraction of what our governments spend on road construction.
The Gympie Rd tunnel is not a costed project, it's still in the consultation/feasibility phase. So no savings there.
What road project or maintenance works, specifically, are you proposing to cancel in order to fund $169 million for extra buses? Are these projects BCC solely funded or jointly funded with another Government body? I don't think that's unreasonable to know ahead of being asked to vote on this proposal as party policy.
If you look at the BCC budget summary, the second page of it shows $300m in road funding. I don't know how much of that Jonno wants to cut, but that's easily more than enough to cover the cost of this bus program.
>Wonder what programs Sri plans to axe to pay for it, or what rates he intends to raise.
He's been pretty upfront about some big rate rises for vacant properties or properties that raise rents.
His own press releases for those proposals have forecast almost zero extra revenue for those ideas.
>He's been pretty upfront about some big rate rises for vacant properties
"[However in practice, we anticipate relatively little revenue would be collected via this vacancy levy](https://www.jonathansri.com/vacant)"
> or properties that raise rents.
" [The Greens do not expect any significant extra rates revenue from this plan](https://www.jonathansri.com/rentfreeze)"
The question remains, how he's going to pay for this. Is he cutting existing programs or raising rates?
Probably cut forecasted hideously expensive road upgrades that will do nothing but create congestion. You wouldn’t believe how many millions of dollars goes into a single kilometre of road.
This years transport budget was 2.38 billion.
This is 2,380 million. The roads resurfacing was $103 million.
The upcoming projects for reducing congestion are 20+ billion over the next several years.
$170million for buses will result in an immediate reduction in not only maintenance costs, but the reduced car volumes are likely to save hundreds of millions.
They just won three federal seats in Brisbane. So I wouldn't say they have no prospect of holding any power in BCC, given one federal seat translates to something like 4 council seats.
Jonathan will never get my vote. Egomaniac with a messiah complex who pretends to be someone different but is just as cold and calculating as all the other people he rails against. He fell in love with his own bullshit story and is just another upper middle class kid pretending to be poor. He is willing to say whatever he thinks will get him votes and isn’t interested in ever delivering for people.
Hard to trust anything Jonathan Sriranganathan says as he still hasn't answered key questions about their rent reform proposals, even when he was asked directly on reddit.
There are roughly 900 000 voters in Brisbane. I've been much more responsive to questions on Reddit than any other Brisbane politician I'm aware of. The implication that I'm untrustworthy or 'dodging questions' because I haven't had time to respond to every single comment and question on a reddit thread is setting an unreasonable standard that no individual human candidate is ever going to be able to meet. Send me an email at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if you have a genuine, good-faith question that I've overlooked.
He literally gave you the way to contact him and get the answers you wanted, send him an email and if the answer isn't sufficient come back and post it to the subreddit and tag him
That's kind of the point, Brisbane's hub/spoke public transport design isn't appropriate for its evolving transport needs. Making travel that bypasses the CBD hopefully more viable and relieve congestion as a result.
Buses are a good stop gap solution, but we desperately need more trains and possibly tram lines. Generally speaking, buses stop more frequently and closer distances, then trams and then trains. It would also be great to allow rezoning, so density could be increased but in the meantime baby steps.
The Greens’ bid for City Hall has stepped up a gear, with mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan to announce an election commitment for 15 new high-frequency bus routes on Monday. Should the Greens be successful in March’s local government election, a further 10 bus routes would be upgraded and 13 new bus and transit lanes would be installed on key bus corridors. In what he described as Brisbane’s biggest expansion of bus services in decades, Sriranganathan said it was a solution to the city’s hub-and-spoke public transport model, which required many passengers to travel into the inner-city area before doubling back to a suburban destination. The plan has been costed at $169 million a year – $142 million for the 15 new services and $27 million for the 10 upgraded routes. “Thousands of residents have told us they’d like to catch a bus, but that the frequency, operating hours and coverage of Brisbane’s current services just isn’t good enough,” Sriranganathan said. “Why should Brisbane’s public transport system be so much worse than other developed cities?” “This would be the biggest, most significant, expansion of public transport in most people’s lifetimes, filling major gaps in the network and giving more people the freedom to leave their car at home.” Along with the 15 new high-frequency routes, existing routes 175, 192, 220, 235, 380 and 470 would be upgraded to high frequency, aligning them with Bus Upgrade Zone routes. The 100, 196 and 444 BUZ routes would be extended, while route 390 would be extended and upgraded to high frequency. Bus priority transport corridors would also be introduced on Kelvin Grove/Enoggera and Lutwyche/Gympie roads on the northside; Old Cleveland Road, Ipswich Road/Main Street, Logan Road, Mains Road, Stanley and Vulture streets, Montague Road and Lytton/Wynnum roads on the southside; and the Centenary Motorway, a new inner-west transitway via Sir Fred Schonell Drive and the UQ campus, Coronation Drive and Moggill Road on the westside. Generally, bus priority would take the form of T2 lanes on four-lane roads, with dedicated bus lanes on six-lane roads, with some adjustments based on local conditions. https://preview.redd.it/j45cmtilsj5c1.png?width=1354&format=png&auto=webp&s=537095f4393d27dc8c2a13b1bbe1a03a7a8adea4 Sriranganathan said proposals such as the Gympie Road bypass tunnel, which has the support of both the Labor state government and the LNP administration in City Hall, would do little to alleviate traffic on Brisbane roads. “Right now, the major parties’ main response to traffic congestion is to waste billions building more car tunnels and widening intersections, but all the evidence tells us that improving public transport should be the priority, and that building more roads creates more traffic,” he said. “Wasting $9 billion on a tunnel under Gympie Road is a ludicrous idea when we could revolutionise public transport coverage and access for a fraction of that price.” While the Greens vote has surged in Brisbane, the party remains an underdog in the March election, with the lord mayoral race a three-way contest between Sriranganathan, incumbent Adrian Schrinner (LNP) and Labor’s Tracey Price. The Greens’ election commitment was given to this masthead on an embargoed basis, meaning comment from third parties could not be sought.
The dedicated bus lanes are probably far more important than the upgraded services. The issue with Brisbane buses is not so much their frequency as it is their unreliability. A bus could be anywhere between five minutes early or ten minutes late, if it even shows up at all, subject to the conditions of traffic bottlenecks on major roads. Higher frequency is good though if they can afford to run them. Maybe cancelling that new toll road could save the budget some cash on that front.
The new routes do fix one of the major issues with Brisbane’s transit, which is that everything goes through the city or Cultural Centre. Want a bus from one suburb to another? No. Go to King George Square first!
Yeah I agree new routes are needed. Some sort of circle route around the suburbs might be useful. But I also think the major issue with the hub-and-spoke model could be addressed with better reliability and scheduling of services - the main problem is that transfers are unreliable and can leave you waiting for like 20 mins if your connecting bus is delayed. Removing bus traffic from car traffic could help to streamline the present model and make it actually minimally viable. Both are necessary but I feel the fundamental congestion problem needs to be fixed before we expand the system further.
Frequency is still good because it allows you to chain journeys. Say you only have a half hourly bus service. You are catching a bus to the city, but want to make a pit stop at a business on the way for an errand. If you make that pit stop, you are committed to spending 30 mins at the business till you can resume on the following bus, even if your errand will only take 10 mins. you're forced to waste 20 mins. Furthermore, even if your reliability is really good, its not possible to make every connection in a grid network timed transfer. But once buses start operating every 10-15 mins, you gain so much extra flexibility.
You're right that the T3 lanes/bus lanes are actually the most important and best value-for-money element of this initiative, but it's hard to get the general public interested in and excited about reallocating road space.
The T2 lanes barely get enforced. I filter past so many single person cars down mains road and onto the Nathan up ramp, I can't imagine how frustrating that would be to the bus drivers.
It makes me cry inside when I am sitting in peak hour traffic on a bus on Coro Drive, and nearly every car has one person in it. :'(
"Not Just Bikes" on YouTube has a great benchmark for wether or not a city has effective public transport and it's simple as this; > Do your buses get stuck in traffic?
The upgraded riverhills and fig tree pocket services would massively help me out though-I have to vote greens now
and if they are running early, they dont wait around, they just leave early to avoid being late to the next one. So even if you arrive on time you never know if you bus will even come. What would be great would be some kind of live GPS monitoring app like uber has for its drivers. see if the bus that rocked up 15 minutes late was the one you expected or the next one running early.
This already exists
The Translink phone app already has this capability -- but I also like the "Transit" app because you can schedule a push notification when your bus is 5/10/xx minutes away as per the GPS tracker.
last time i used it (which to be fair was a while ago) that functionality was shit.
Been a while since I lived in West End but for a lot of the 192s route it was an air parcel…
It was when I lived there as well - but in 10 years West End has completely changed and there's a lot more high density residential in the area now.
Right, they've got my vote. That tunnel proposal is stupid, this is actually a good idea.
Id love it if the Greens went in hard with a genuine alternative to the Northern toll tunnel. Eg say that they would do a driverless metro under Gympie Road instead, lob that bomb and get the public talking about it, then watch the incumbent tie themselves in Knotts trying to explain why a tollway is better lol. I would say a fair few voters would actually prefer a project like that, The problem is neither liberal or labor are going to give us it.
State project, and the first thing the majors would say is "these loony Greens will bankrupt us all!"
> “Why should Brisbane’s public transport system be so much worse than other developed cities?” To be fair, many other developed cities have higher density in inner suburban areas which help support better public transport. Are the Greens going to allow higher density housing in places like Paddington and Red Hill that are a Stone’s throw away from the CBD and would help support more efficient public transport use? I mean some of these suburbs are even walking distance to the CBD! > “This would be the biggest, most significant, expansion of public transport in most people’s lifetimes, filling major gaps in the network and giving more people the freedom to leave their car at home.” Better access to more frequent busses is great but would this really be a more significant expansion in public transport than say, the Gold Coast or Redcliffe train lines?
In terms of the number of people with access to high frequency services, it would have to be up there.
Building higher density is a lot better when the infrastructure is already in place to support it. Infrastructure like good public transport.
It's all very well and good to demand more buses and greater frequency and longer routes, but without being able to recruit drivers they can't even service their current routes. The conditions are poor, the pay is bad, Brisbane drivers are lunatics, and the buses are filled with meth addicts, hobos, generally abusive people, and the drivers are at risk of being set on fire. Until they get more security, nobody in their right mind would sign up to be a Brisbane bus driver particularly on the 196 West End to the Valley methylamphetamine express.
That's just a question of money then, to pay drivers more and hire guards.
paying more to workers in general would solve so many issues.
If they spend some of this money on guards, and threw the riff raff out on the streets, it would do a lot to get people back on public transport. Maybe we don't need more busses, just get more people back on them.
Brisbane council has debt of $3.28bn and a budget surplus of only $322,608. There's no money.
You've misread that I'm afraid, it's a $322.608 million increase in operating capability. And they have $174 million in cash on hand.
"Right now, the major parties’ main response to traffic congestion is to waste billions building more car tunnels and widening intersections, but all the evidence tells us that improving public transport should be the priority, and that building more roads creates more traffic" Put that on a plague. We have known for the better part of a century that expanding roadway capacity makes traffic worse, not better. Induced demand doesn't magically stop working because you put your new lanes underground or because you believe hard enough that this time is different, despite all evidence to the contrary. The only proven way to reduce congestion is to make more efficient modes more attractive so people switch. Road space is limited. If your road is congested, swapping a lane for cars that carries 1,000-2,800 people per hour for a bus lane that carries 4,000-8,000 people per hour is a no-brainer.
I dunno about that, I had a real problem with my weight making my belt really tight. So I punched a few extra belt holes further out, and it wasn't tight for like 6 months. Then I just punched a few more holes, and it's been sweet for a week now. Seems like I've solved my eating problem.
Incredible. Finally someone actually says what has been obvious to anyone with a bit of transport knowledge, and proposes a realistic, doable proposal which addresses the issue. Route 369 gets the upgrade it deserves. More bus frequency to serve KP. Bus lanes on stroads. More crosstown service for people who aren't commuters. If I would like to propose one thing, maybe splitting the GCL into 4 contiguous crosstown routes and integrating it into this new proposal? Would prevent the issue of compounding delays. Good on ya, Jonno!
yes, yes, fucking yes. so many good route options so many journeys that take an hour plus that would be halved at least. my journey to work is currently 45 minutes, in a car you make that journey in less than 15 minutes.
Wonder if the greens have bothered to show how much could be saved on road wear and tear, upgrades, less traffic jams and the rest of it, due to less traffic and more peoe using Public Transport. It would certainly show how the increase in the public transport budget can be offset
Yeah over the long run it would certainly save millions on road resurfacing, plus the flow-on economic costs of traffic congestion etc. The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings. It'd be nice if some academics could put some time into researching that sort of stuff.
Good to know. Thank you. Hopefully someone with the skills does volunteer to help do this.
Excuse my ignorance I’ve been away for a while! I always feel Green Party policies best reflect my own beliefs but often don’t have the talent on board to implement their manifesto. Do we have the talent on board to turn these ideas into reality. Please don’t take offence as I know this job can’t be easy.
Transport policies would be implemented by public servants anyway.
They've certainly been getting better at it as the party has grown and legitimised. Labor and LNP have the funds to pay for this stuff, and finally the greens are getting to that point.
if they get into government them they have the resources of the Council to implement
Good question Dave! Basically, when Greens campaigns are developing policies and proposed initiatives prior to an election, most of the work is being done by volunteers, perhaps with a little bit of research support from a couple of staffers in the offices of elected Greens reps. But if the Greens win enough seats to take control of a jurisdiction (e.g. Brisbane City Council) we would then have control over a large public service with heaps of subject matter experts who'd be able to implement the ideas we've proposed during the election campaign. So yes, I think the talent is there.
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Did one of them run over your dog or something?
They're literally reflecting on their lived experience you absolute flog
I see a lot of "probably"s and resentment, and not a lot of actual lived experience.
Have the Greens spent much time talking to people who either: A) don't live in the inner suburbs? B) are marginal voters? There are very few people who are not already public transport users who will be swayed by the promise of more things that they typically despise as a personal transport option. There's a very good reason why world cities have invested so heavily in rail infrastructure. Take the TBMs dedicated to making roads and put them to use building a decent underground metro.
Would you rather they proposed something for Council election which they had absolutely no ability to deliver, rather than something which they would have some ability to deliver?
That's particularly reductive. I'd rather they proposed something that had strategic vision and long term planning improvements behind it. It's perfectly possible to bring in a rail link within 4 years. It's also possible to build high speed feeder roads with few exits to remove coastal peak hour traffic from surface roads (southern Brisbane has some of this). Buses require significant additional infrastructure, from road lanes (see Gympie road), interchanges, scheduling, etc. They, unlike other solutions, are often so completely impractical that they are particularly hard to demonstrate good value in terms of value over the life of the bus vs a larger and longer term transport solution. Focusing on adding high density housing precicts where community, amenity, and infrastructure come together would be a better start to both housing and transport pressure. Expanding the bus network.is a solution they few, if any, have recognised as being of benefit or desired. And since we are talking about an election platform, what's the point of running on a platform few want?
Alright. Where in Brisbane (BCC area, because election context) could we build a train line within four years for under $200 million? Doomben line extension, very maybe? --- In every public transport system, everywhere in the world, you are going to have buses serving routes and areas that rail lines can't or don't yet serve. That we might be in a position to build rail somewhere sometime in the future is no argument to not run a good quality bus service there today. The point is to have a frequent network that covers the city. If you look at the State Government's SEQ regional transport plan for 2041 they include a bunch of corridors which aren't currently frequent (many of course are outside BCC, but many inside BCC too). It averages out to a couple a year across SEQ. We can quibble about priorities and which corridors deserve it more and all that. Goodness knows I don't necessarily agree with the specifics of every route the Greens are proposing here. But as they note, we've seen ~no new BUZ-standard routes in BCC since the Maroon Glider, almost a decade now. We did have a big wave of upgrades the prior decade, of course. It's time to make a start on some more. Again, the point is to have a frequent network that covers the city. Buses, trains, trams, ferries, whatever. Frequent service - even the humble bus - is better than infrequent service. And by all means once the patronage is there, we should be talking about upgrades to higher capacity modes. --- btw, I believe Gympie Rd is taking forever because there's a squillion services buried under what was the parking lane. It's easy to rip up a parking lane to do works, not so much a bus lane. And so there's been a coördination nightmare in making sure all of that's in good condition etc. But I also think there's a bit of a difference between what's happening with Gympie Rd, and changing general traffic lanes into peak-hour T2 or T3 lanes. In the latter case, the lane already carries buses and other traffic, we're just excluding single-occupant cars a couple of hours each day to give buses and multi-occupant cars a better run.
>how much could be saved on road wear and tear, upgrades, Not how it works. It would cost them way more to maintain. Road damage is a function of the [fourth power law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law). Running a shitload of lightweight vehicles is much, much better for the road surface than running one heavy vehicle over it. Especially considering council buses are usually only dual axle with the exception of bendy buses and the extra long busses. For example a 2 tonne car with two axles = 1^(4) = 1. 10 tonne bus with two axles = 5^(4) = 625 For context the maximum weight of our Volgren-bodied Volvo B8RLE buses are a hair over 19 tonnes in two axle form, when loaded at capacity with 80 people. According to the Forth Power Law, you'd need to drive 8 *thousand* 2 tonne cars in the same spot to do the same amount of wear as a council bus at capacity. Even assuming a generous partially loaded 14 tonne weight you're still looking at a little under 2500 cars.
Its probably more the "upgrades" side of things. Eg how often do intersections get upgraded to increase throughput for cars? If public transport options are improved, the growth in traffic volumes is subdued, so you might Only have to upgrade every 30 years not every 15-20.
I mean does it really matter? If you want bus specific infrastructure you're still going to be spending a lot of time and money on road infrastructure. That's not to point out that buses are subsidised because they don't make enough money from fares. Like more public transport is fine but it's not exactly a golden ticket to saving millions.
I don't think it's about saving millions, but spending efficiently for enabling local economy and societal mobility. Realistically public transport shouldn't need to "make enough money from fares" because they're a net positive for the economy.
I mean I haven't said anything that indicates I think otherwise. All I did was pointed several of the original points aren't correct.
Fair fair! Interesting to see the physics constraints of supporting public transport upgrades. I would've thought the rear wheels of the buses were double, or does that not make a significant difference and weight needs to be distributed lengthwise rather than more widely?
The single vs double wheel is a minute enough difference that we don't bother accounting for it. Each axle passing over a section of pavement causes a loading cycle of the pavement flexing. Spreading that load cycle through a 2nd tire double the contact area, but the area of pavement and subgrade resisting the load of each tire spreads out in a zone of influence that overlaps with the other tire.
Plus we don't know the % utilisation. One bus doesn't = X number of cars.
Personal commuter vehicles contribute an extremely small amount to damage to roads requiring things like resurfacing. So the cost saving does not exist there. Increasing bus frequency, axle loads will drastically increase maintenance requirements on roads. The real benefits are to air quality, noise pollution and less traffic. Which while intangible cost wise are important to liveability of the city.
Business cases for each project do assign a $ amount to these benefits (air quality, noise pollution and less traffic delays etc.) and consider this as part of the justification for allocating funds. So, while they are intangible, they are still standardised, quantifiable, and considered for every project. Reduced traffic / travel times are often the largest benefit in a cost-benefit analysis for transport infrastructure projects.
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Like the plan through I would like to see the 61 Glider be extended to Enoggera Station as it can connect with trains plus it has a Bus Interchange and rest area for drivers.
Good feedback! We're definitely open to making other improvements to the public transport network beyond the scope of this plan.
you’ve got my vote if you put wheel covers on them and call it a Metro but seriously, why does Council and the State of Queensland find this so hard? the money spent on roads is absurd
Great in-depth policy docs! There’s an important detail that doesn’t seem to be covered though: will they have wheel covers?
Good work on the map. Really helps to be able to visualise how it'll network into the existing high-frequency bus services to form an actual network.
Love ya work mate go kick that dodgy Schrinner bloke and his corrupt LNP car council out
A representative willing to interact with their community on a message board is the type of individual that we need more of. Well done.
Beetlejuicing, huh? How about an underground railway from CRR to Dockside, via KP, New farm and Bulimba too... If only haha
Trains are a State Issue not a Council one anyway.
premise is the same, different mode of transport.
I had a look at the map, the only thing that stuck out to me is the Old Northern Road corridor (from Ennoggera to Albany creek) is probably the biggest gap in the plan) I like the overall logic of having several east west routes that form a sort of grid, intersecting with existing BUZ routes and rail lines, it's just that the western part of the "grid" is incomplete without a frequent bus along that road. But overall it's actually a really good proposal for improving the coverage of the system. I feel most recent council PT initiatives have always skewed towards the inner suburbs. This plan addresses that imbalance.
Yeah I think this partly reflects the fact that our plan is mostly focussed on the Brisbane City Council area, but if we got some Greens elected into Moreton Bay Regional Council (which covers the Albany Creek area) we could definitely look at collaborating on some improved services along that corridor too.
So good to see a party actually wanting to shift the dial on transport.
Indeed, hope they get rewarded for having a policy like this, because it will make every other party start taking public transport seriously too.
If greens did more of this and less insane things like opposing GMOs they would be running the country in no time
That's kind of how political parties work outside of ones specifically targeted at single-issue voters. No party will ever encompass every policy that you personally would like to see. In this case, regardless of the Green's position on GMO's ([which is awful](https://greens.org.au/policies/genetically-modified-organisms)) the Brisbane City Council doesn't actually have the ability to translate that position into an actionable policy. So it's completely harmless rhetoric. Policies are what actually effect people's lives, not rhetoric. Good policies mixed with stupid but ultimately harmless rhetoric is probably about as good as you're ever going to get from politics unfortunately. Nobody is going to map your personal political beliefs one-for-one unless you run yourself.
If people actually read Greens policy rather than focus on deflective sound bites of meaningless nothing, they’d know they’ve been advocating for public transport expansions for years.
As a Green member I agree with the above comment. Far too often they're more interested in pushing fringe issues. I get they have the ability to do many things at once but seeing first hand in meetings there's factions in the greens that want nothing more than to be outrageous
I see very few fringe issues, other than what people insist they push. I have no doubt the fringe issues get raised within the party meetings. That’s where they should come out and be debated, that’s what the party meetings are for. The other parties do exactly the same in their meetings…discuss fringe issues that more radical members bring forward. I get a bit tired of this focus on fringe issues whenever good policy is brought forward. This is part of that shitty bar that doesn’t exist for the other parties. Every time something the Greens do or propose that is good, it’s battered by comments like the one above.
I vote Greens, but they do have many fringe issues that they really do push. Anti-nuclear is their biggest one, but their anti-Australia/monarchy stuff, the anti-GMO things, etc. Even Max’s weird insistence on airplane noise being an issue. Expanded public transport, expanded healthcare to dental and mental, closing tax loopholes, preventing new fossil fuel projects, etc. are why I vote for them, and they’re not going to lose my vote over fringe issues, but I do wish they’d drop them to make themselves more electable.
Yeah, I hear it. There are fringe issues. I apply the same bar to them as I do the other parties, in that they all have points that I either don’t agree with or are fringe. I then look at how problematic they are. The biggest problems I have with the Greens are a couple of policies on the national level, such as the naivety on defence and how fast they think we can complete the energy transition, both of which I think they’d find they’d have to drop pretty quickly. I’m not concerned with the vegan, gay, GMO, airplane noise, all those are only ever used as reasons not to vote Green and they’re either just not big things or they’re the right thing to do. Anti Australia I don’t see, what do you mean by that?
Such as Bandt after the last election removing the Australian flag from behind him while he gave his speech, and how fast he was after Lizzy 2 died to call for a Republic referendum. The Greens are keenly aware that we’re a settler country with a problematic past and their leader is quite keen on doing something about that rather than just ignoring it, which is what the general public would want to do.
Well the Queen a few of us aren’t going to be broken hearted about and the same probably stands for the flag but I take your point in it, those optics aren’t great. That referendum would be fine as well. I think you’re overplaying the affection sone of us have as a whole for the Crown. Its strength lies in the oversight within the Westminster system, nothing else. If we could replace the Crown oversight with something just as effective I’m happy for all three to be replaced asap. Still, so far, the policy platform, the housing fight they’ve put up, the fact that’s still better than the two majors has kept my vote for them and it would be nice if we started giving them consideration for the good they’re doing and spent less time deflecting or finding reasons to run them down.
Like I said, I vote for them. But I do wish they’d drop such controversial issues that only serve to lower their votes. Greens don’t need to be pro-nuclear, just not anti, that’d win votes. Greens don’t need to be pro-GMO, just not anti, that’d win votes. And while the Republic should be debated soon as the topic has been on hold since the 90s due to waiting out Lizzy’s reign, it probably wouldn’t hurt if the Greens took a more “Australia is great we should have our own leadership” rather than “Colonisation has been a disaster for Australia and we should leave behind its legacy” (which is a popular statement to some but extremely unpopular to others). A good example for how Greens should do things is like their stance on veganism. They obviously approve of it, but they’re not taking any major actions against the meat industry and aren’t making it an issue to vote on. It’s a thumbs up but a purely neutral stance. Greens could drop their negative attitudes towards nuclear but just never put forward anything positive towards it either.
As for the nuclear one, yeah, we should have been serious about that discussion ages ago, but I recall it being far more nationally driven than just the Greens. Nuclear power along with the Franklin Dam polarised this country and forever changed the way we did the environment here, both with protest and governance. That discussion is done now, it’s pretty obvious we can make that transition without it now. Maybe dropping some of the controversy might help their bottom line vote. I don’t know, the prejudices run deep. They’re a very convenient outlet for views people otherwise wouldn’t want to show.
Australia has never had a nuclear power plant and has almost no domestic nuclear industry. Labor and LNP have had 60 years to build nuclear and haven't built any. The big nuclear push fizzled out decades before the Greens formed. Being anti-nuclear isn't universal, but it is a mainstream position.
It’s about perspective really. Green parties should not be anti-nuclear in a fossil fuel economy. So anti-nuclear beliefs, relative to typical environmentalist attitudes, is fringe. However yes, relative to mainstream politics, it is more default, especially Australian mainstream.
This is one example. "Note that the Brisbane Renters Alliance calls for a 'soft limit' on rental increases, suggesting that rents should only be allowed to increase by 1% per annum unless major improvements are made to a property. Other groups, such as the Queensland Greens, have called for rent limits to be capped at CPI (the [**Consumer Price Index**](https://www.abs.gov.au/methodologies/consumer-price-index-australia-methodology/mar-2021)) which is a measure of inflation that's currently sitting at around 1.1% per year. "
Perhaps you don't see the issues as fringe then. The greens would dominate if they focused on their good policies that everyone agrees with
God this. People laugh at Murdoch whenever it's some negative Labor article, but then lap it up when it's about The Greens.
It’s a genuine reflection of how stupid we are. Drags in ‘GMOs’ from nowhere (we know it’s the ‘woke’ criticism again) but misses the point that PT improvements and development has been a cornerstone of Green policy for years. Doesn’t help that the articles says ‘radical’ but still. This is why we get the governments and policy that we do, when we could do so much better.
What? Go on Greens website it’s one of their policies. I understand greens have been pro PT for a while, I think that’s one of their best policies! I’m just saying they have lots of great policies, and some batshit ones too
>What? Go on Greens website The policy is actually a moratorium and investigation. Their position is that they are researched and labelled correctly. What’s the problem with that, where is that insane? It’s a terrific but unnecessary sound bite in your comment though. Why did you add it? What’s it got to do with public transport? >I understand… Do you? Your comment sounded as if they were finally doing something right. Not the comment of someone who understands their history. >some batshit ones Go on.
“Researched” ?!? Yeah this anti-science take is my problem. GMOs have already been researched with conclusive and unanimous scientific agreement that they are safe. It’s the same as saying we shouldn’t be bringing more renewables online and keep using coal until we have more research that global warming is actually real. More “research” is not needed. we know the answer. Anyone who disagrees with that, and the *hundreds* of Nobel laureates who petitioned for GMOs is simply anti-science and I have no patience for such a take
The Greens as a group do have a policy about GMOs especially foods that is way over cautious (ie their “precautionary principle” which delays innovation for proof that might never satisfy them). You’re basically just trying to replace one issue with another, but single issue voting is just as stupid as mindlessly believing news articles rather than reading honest analysis of policy.
>You’re basically… No I’m not, I’m calling someone else out for using another policy to run down this good policy.
No they didn’t. They made comment about the party holistically but even praised this policy. You’re more interested in focusing on a single policy and got upset with them for pointing out that the party isn’t going to win on a single issue. You’re right you’re not “basically” doing it, you’re *literally* doing it.
>They made comment about the party holistically They said that if the Greens did more of this (which they do) *and less insane things* like opposing GMO *which is literally replacing one issue with another* >Got upset Where did I get upset? I pointed out use of deflection, bluntly. >Pointed out the party isn’t going to win on a single issue. No, they emphasised other policies which they think costs the Greens, by *replacing one issue with another*. Now, what single policy am I interested in focusing on more?
They made the comment that if the Greens focused on policies like transport that was generally seen as beneficial, and less on policies like their hardline questionable stance on GMO foods, they’d be much more likely to form government. It’s a blanket statement with individual examples. *You* then got upset that they dared to make such a comment instead of only focusing on the *good policy*.
>focused on policies like transport….and less on policies like their…stance on GMO They do, though. We hear far more about transport and energy production policies from the Greens than we do about GMO. It’s one of their fringe topics, one that’s…usually pulled in to deflect from the good work the party does. Questionable is based on opinion there, as well, I’ve read their policy on it, I’m fine with it and I understand it’s going through some review at this time. >It’s a blanket statement It’s also a deflection. It’s an unnecessary one, which shines further unnecessary bad light. Not only that, the claim the Greens push insane policies over good ones is false. >*You* then got upset You’ll run with this regardless, but no, I’m not upset about it. I am a bit tired of it though, because on a general basis it’s damaging our society. Good things are run down by bad. It’s not even true.
As I regularly say "are we talking about what the Courier Mail would like you to think the Greens are, or the actual Greens?"
https://greens.org.au/policies/genetically-modified-organisms Actual Greens (though not related to a Local Election, nor should it, GMO are not a Local Council problem.) >A moratorium on the further release of GMOs into the environment until there is an adequate scientific understanding of their long term impact on the environment, human and animal health. This includes the **removal as far as possible of GMOs from Australian agriculture** while the moratorium is in place. Their first aim in relation to GMO's is batshit insane (and pretty much impossible.)
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Yes they have, which is great. Unfortunately they’ve also been anti GMO for years too which is bonkers. If they got rid of that policy they’d win a lot more support
>unfortunately they’ve also been anti GMO…which is bonkers… See my comment above, they want them thorough researched and labelled. That’s not an insane position to take. I want that as well. I don’t oppose the use of GMO, but I want it under strict regulation.
They want them banned until some fantasy point in the future pending "Research". This is not what you're saying. Trouble is, the research is done, the fear is baseless, and what they actually want is GMO's banned and demonised for no rational reason - because, they HAVE been researched, the research is finished, and the hippies are still bein anti-scientific by fighting them.
>Until some fantasy point in the future Rhetorical, and yes, each GMO should be tested. That’s not radical, nor is the fact that the time line needs to be left open, because more GMOs will become available in the future. Since that’s in the future, we don’t know when that will be. I assume that’s what you’re speculating? >The research is done Not on GMOs that haven’t been introduced yet. >The hippies Now we are getting to the crux of your prejudice. Now you’ve waxed lyrical about the national policy deflection, what about the local PT policy?
I really don't think their stance on GMO is the reason a lot of people don't vote for them.
It's generally the reason they only get my second preference behind a reasonable independent (in the unlikely event I have one) or a Hemp party protest vote. If I have a good feeling about a specific ALP candidate they might be a coin toss. Last Fed and State Election the Green member was just a placeholder, no information on their Candidate listing and just a generic response when I emailed them.. The only person to give me a good personal reply was the HEMP party member... though I understand that the volume of requests for her was likely lower.
If people did some research on other cities/states/countries that have enacted some of the greens policies they would also know that they greens policies sound good in practice but rarely work out. Rent caps, a well known greens policy, is a perfect example of this.
Bullshit. Rent caps work where applied correctly. There’s a view pushed by investors that it discourages investment, but it’s a view only. More to the point it hasn’t been tested in our market, and the fact those in our market frightened about it the most are investors, real estates and landlords, I get the feeling it’s probably a good policy. Anyway, the only evidence we’ve got for the Greens being in power was the Gillard Government which passed more effective bills than any other, including the NDIS and NBN which the Coalition fucked, that world class carbon trading scheme which the Coalition fucked and the work they’re doing with the current government like the concessions they gained through the housing policies. But yeah, something something research something other countries something vague something rarely work out.
It’s not so much that it would discourage investment than that it would likely encourage divestment. Landlords selling off their rental properties because their potential ROI has been capped might sound great for high income renters who are in the market to buy for themselves, but it pushes low income renters with no hope of buying out of the residential property market entirely. If the Greens want to help those struggling to pay rent, it seems like rent caps have it entirely backward by supporting higher income renters over lower income renters.
>likely encourage divestment If so, that can only do one thing..drag house prices and therefore rents further downwards. >great for high income renters *If it happened*, great for anyone either entering this market, or renting, because their rent is either capped or lower >pushes low income renters That’s an assumption. It’s more likely that, *if that divestment occurred,* rents would begin to lower. None of them are selling their properties unless they have to, because they’ve got loans to service and the investment to consider. >it *seems like* rent caps have it backwards We don’t know, we haven’t tested them here, you admit that yourself with the indented, but it’s probably likely they don’t. Higher income renters don’t care and aren’t competing for the same housing. Most people with a high enough income and want stability aren’t renting out of choice. Anyway, forget the deflections and stick to both the evidence and the topic, that is, they have proven their ability to govern well, and this policy is a good one, reflective of the Greens long time stance on improving public transport.
>We don’t know, we haven’t tested them here The policy has been tested around the world and in most cases it's a failure. Landlords begin to discriminate on who they perceive to have the most stable life/income i.e wealthy high income people. It also reduces investment and to an extent encourages divestment from rental properties (aka less apartments on the market to rent). The only semi sucessful case of rent control is in Vienna and that's because they didn't really implement rent control. Essentially the government had a policy of fixing old privately owned units (pre 1945 buildings) with public money, so in an effort to prevent landlords from making money off that they implemented rent control on only pre 1945 buildings. All other buildings in Vienna aren't on rent control. The real reason Vienna has cheap rents is because the government has a massive surplus of public housing. This keeps the rent of post 1945 buildings down since people can live in the public housing cheaply. Rent control has failed in pretty much every city other than Vienna. Tl:DR Don't bother with rent control, just increase the supply of apartments/houses.
How would it drag rents down? Landlords selling would decrease the supply of rental properties overall. Not sure how that would decrease rental costs. No one will rent a property on a loss so they’re more likely to just sell, and it’s not clear that this influx of supply into the buyers market will cause house prices to fall sufficiently far to allow low income renters to buy into the market. So, they’re stuck with renting, but with fewer rental properties available it will likely get harder to find a home. If the basis for your support for this policy is simply “we don’t really know but it might work”, I’m not sure I’m interested in testing an experimental policy idea that has the potential to backfire tremendously. As a lower income renter myself I am genuinely concerned that my landlord selling would leave me ultimately homeless in the current market. And if we implement policies that render renting financially insolvent for landlords with interest rates the way they are, why wouldn’t they all just sell? The Greens have not proven their ability to govern well because they have never governed. Meanwhile Labor has a solid policy platform to increase housing supply and density through zoning reform and addressing vacant properties. Don’t get me wrong - I’ll pref Green over LNP any day obviously, but let’s not get carried away with the Greens’ promises to fix everything in a single term.
Sometimes I just want a party that advocates for the environment and public transport without calling for the genocide of the Jewish people or opposing vaccination and 5G.
>Opposing vaccination and 5G [From their policy platform](https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-05/Greens-2022-Policy-Platform--Services--Nbn.pdf) ‘The Greens are committed to a…NBN that uses FTTP, FTTC and *5G Fixed Wireless*….’ [From their policy document](https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-05/Greens-2022-Policy-Platform--Services--Nbn.pdf) ‘The Greens will invest to establish a publicly owned mRNA vaccine production facility in Australia… >calling for the genocide of the Jewish people I know they have asked for a ceasefire in Gaza, but I need to see where they’re calling for the genocide of Jewish people.
Oh yeah, the greens are famous for their calls for genocide. /s
Good thing the Greens didn't call for the latter two then. Sounds like they meet your criteria!
I haven't heard them talk about GMOs for a long time now.
OH NO NOT AMBITION
A great way to improve roads for the people who need to drive cars is to remove a significant number of motorists who don't actually need or want to sit in traffic. When my commute was 20m driving cross town or 1h20 because of hub/spoke public transport you know which one I was choosing. If everyone like me in that situation had a good public transport option the remaining people whose jobs/lifestyle/disability actually requires driving will have an easier time driving. Parking would be less competitive and costly tolls would be less necessary. I'm excited for this, but I expect all the car-supremacists will go frothing mad at the idea the city would take an evidence based approach to improving their access to roadways.
everyone vote for Jono, at the very least it would be very funny
Didn't trump get in on a similar campaign strategy? Though the two are widely different (and mostly opposite) "for the lulz" is a very bad way to play politics.
Perhaps but A) Brisbane City Council and the world's largest economy are not the same thing and B) Trump wouldn't have won if the US presidential electoral system was remotely fair. He lost the popular vote by a long way.
you mean the guy who won in the biggest political upset ever?
Yep, that's the guy. It's worked out so well for everyone.
It’s actually ideas like this that we need to improve Brisbane traffic. Living through the nightmare that is the Indooroopilly roundabout upgrade at a quarter of $1 billion for one intersection doesn’t feel like the way.
Tbh if they build a bus lane along Gympie Road (which is planned to Bracken Ridge) the tunnel is of no use. I don’t know about the other areas, but the hills really need buses to be able to access train stations- so Eatons Hill to Banyo is a nice thing. They should try to reduce traffic in Gympie Road rather than encouraging it. Taking the train is faster to get to the city by car for my outer city suburb, which is fortunate cause the fastest way is to drive to the station park n ride and take the train, so the PT usage rate in my suburb is fair especially for city commuters. Anyway, nice job.
I’m sure all of us in each suburb have their own opinions on relevant bus routes, but I’ll throw mine in here: 4017 needs better services. My eldest could only get a bus from wherever they were to Broken Fridge (Gawain road) and had to literally walk to Brighton - a 90min walk - in upper 30° temps and ultra-high UV. There needs to be local circle routes in each suburb so you can connect with these major routes. For example, a Sandgate-Brighton shuttle, sharing a stop at BRHS which serves BR and Bald hills, which shares stops at BRT with fitzgibbon and taigum, and Bunnings carseldine for strathpine and brendale …etc. Yes, a huge investment but my god would it improve traffic. Imagine being able to just walk for five minutes to your nearest stop and go anywhere within an hour or so.
Agreed. This is a great proposal, and I hope we see it in action, but I think the network could also use very localised services that improve connectivity across a few neighbouring suburbs as well. At the moment I think it’s true for most areas that it’s extremely difficult/nigh impossible to get to at least one suburb in your immediate vicinity via PT. There’s a lot in this proposal to address some of those gaps, but I think localised services creating a loop between major transport hubs and shopping precincts/schools etc. would go a long way.
A bus every 10-15 minutes is considered high-frequency?
It’s actually not, but it’s a big improvement for some bus routes.
Fig tree pocket is once an hour, so HUGE improvement
I don't know why anyone in government would think anyone has use for a bus that only comes once an hour.
And it's very unreliable with timings/delays to boot. I only see people on it during peak morning and evening hours otherwise it's completely empty
Gotta start somewhere
I would never vote Green, but I do like this policy. Although I’ve also been recently convinced that public transport should be free, especially given that fare revenue only makes 10% of Translink’s income.
10% seemed low to me so I went looking for the [source](https://www.publications.qld.gov.au/ckan-publications-attachments-prod/resources/51f061db-e198-41b1-8101-660a134c3c41/cspw-29-2022-2023-annual-report_v2.pdf?ETag=b915cdd08b253e75b4248ff44b7fcecb). On page 11 there it's visible, so the 10% value is true! Unfortunately, it is misleading. The vast majority of the revenue (82%) is just coming straight from the state government as appropriated funding. So if the state government contributed less to Translink, the user charges and fees share would increase. Not saying that I disagree with the overall viewpoint that public transport should drive public good. If you consider for the last financial year that the state government could've spent 7.6b on Translink (versus the 6.3b they did spend) and public transport would be free across the state, it does seem like a small cost.
Exactly! And it's a big boon to people who need it most. Basically if you have less money, you live further out of cities and it costs more to use it. Some proponents of free transport also think there are savings from not having to wait for people to do ticketing and for us the GoCard infrastructure.
You have very progressive views for someone who would never vote Greens.
Public transport fares are so backwards to me. The government spends money subsidising a service because it provides positive externalities. The more people that use the service, the more benefits it provides to society. Additionally, the more people that use the service, the cheaper the service is overall due to economies of scale. Yet instead of removing barriers to using public transport they force people to pay for 10% of the service their taxes are already paying 90% of. I went looking for a figure a while ago on how much they actually spend on enforcing fares but couldn't find it. Would not be surprised if they spent a large chunk of fare revenue on enforcing fares. I love bureaucracy.
I think the part you're missing, and I understand that it's hard to comprehend, but people really, **really**, dislike the idea of a group different to them getting something for free. Free public transport is not relevant to a large, politically active, well connected and wealthy section of our society. They would never consider taking public transport and would be loathe to subsidising it for others with tax dollars they believe they unequally contribute to (and in doing so, they believe they have a greater say in allocating). Unfortunately, I think democracy is the issue that causes the backwardness you are identifying.
Why would you never vote Green if you like their policies over other candidates?
It's one policy and I vote more for ideology/values.
What ideology/values informs your vote for council elections?
jfc
But for me the subsidy is 10% because the network is inefficient and the design isn't useful to many Other countries that have similar social safety nets to Australia can achieve 30-50% cost recovery
The 10% figure holds in other developed countries. And there is economic benefit and efficiency to making it free. Recovering costs from users isn't always the best idea as people who have to travel further are often living in those locations because they're economically disadvantaged to start.
https://www.transitwiki.org/TransitWiki/index.php/Farebox_Recovery_Ratio Really? The ones hovering around 10% are a few US cities. Melbourne achieves 30% Auckland 44%
The greens have some decent proposals but they get lost in the fringe issues that people don’t care about. My main issue with them is I’m not confident they could manage a budget. They have lots of ideas to make stuff free and do all these new things but no plan I can find of how they will be paid for or what will be cut in place of these other shiny new ideas. As long as Schrinner is gone then I’m happy and I have my doubts on whether the greens could be an effective council as a replacement though.
If you vote in a bunch of Greens, it's not like all the accountants, economists and financial managers who work in the Brisbane City Council are going to suddenly cease to exist. The budget would still be prepared by experts, with advice from Greens politicians about what their priorities are. But let's also remember that the Greens have been in shared government in the ACT for several years now (including holding ministerial portfolios). And although there are lots of very legitimate criticisms of Canberra in the federal political context, it's not like things in the ACT are demonstrably worse than other Australian jurisdictions.
Their plans are budgeted like other political parties. This is a classic media scare tactic. There are not many places where Australia has had greens in control at any level but it's not like Byron Bay council has gone bankrupt or something. The focus of the media on these fringe issues really seems like an intentional strategy to delegitimise the party's sensible policies. Just ignore the noise and actually read the policies they focus on at their website. There really isn't that much on fringe woke shit.
I do like some of their policies and they make sense. They’re big on making public transport more accessible etc which makes sense to me as I’d use it more often if it was easier to use and we need to get people off the roads to help ease congestion. They have a few other things I like as well. Again my main issue is I guess I’ve never seen them have that responsibility of managing an actual government so I’m not sure how they’d go with it is all.
Never know until you try them out! But they're doing alright as part of the ACT government alongside Labor.
>Their plans are budgeted like other political parties. No they aren't. As Sri admits; >The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings.
Federally all their policies are costed by the PBO ( since 2010)
>Federally Whats that got to do with the price of tea in China?
>>Their plans are budgeted like other political parties. >No they aren't. As Sri admits; >>The Greens policy platform is predominantly developed by volunteers, many of whom are subject-matter experts but who don't have the time to produce more detailed cost-benefits analyses to precisely quantify savings. Ok there is some nuance here I guess. The costs and revenues for the government are obviously calculated otherwise where do these numbers in the article come from? So in that sense - "where will they get the money?" doesnt make sense. They have at least costed it. In terms of wider economic benefits and rationale that is a lot harder to quantity as you say. So I take your point but I don't think this is what the average punter is thinking or what the media is implying.
> The costs and revenues for the government are obviously calculated otherwise where do these numbers in the article come from? So in that sense - "where will they get the money?" doesnt make sense. They have at least costed it. Costing the policy and being able to pay for it are two entirely different - and both sensible to ask - questions. I can cost up a Ferrari but I'm not likely to be able to raise the money to pay for it.
They’re the only party that actually gets their policies independently costed
That’s interesting. Do you have any links so I can have a look?
Do you want me to link you to all the parties’ policies?
Just not widening any roads saves a lot of money to be used on buses.
I feel like you underestimate how many people in the public service are actually keeping things running. The elected officials typically aren't in excel balancing the budgets themselves, there's public servants whose job is to take policy and work it into actionable budgeted steps.
>The plan has been costed at $169 million a year Wonder what programs Sri plans to axe to pay for it, or what rates he intends to raise. It's always easy to throw grand plans around when you have no prospect of holding any power or possibility to have your bluff called on actually needing to implement them.
We've been pretty up-front that we would axe major road-widening projects and intersection expansion projects that are geared towards carrying more cars - and of course not proceeding with the $8 billion+ Gympie Road tunnel. $169 million/year is a fraction of what our governments spend on road construction.
The Gympie Rd tunnel is not a costed project, it's still in the consultation/feasibility phase. So no savings there. What road project or maintenance works, specifically, are you proposing to cancel in order to fund $169 million for extra buses? Are these projects BCC solely funded or jointly funded with another Government body? I don't think that's unreasonable to know ahead of being asked to vote on this proposal as party policy.
If you look at the BCC budget summary, the second page of it shows $300m in road funding. I don't know how much of that Jonno wants to cut, but that's easily more than enough to cover the cost of this bus program.
>Wonder what programs Sri plans to axe to pay for it, or what rates he intends to raise. He's been pretty upfront about some big rate rises for vacant properties or properties that raise rents.
Yes, but the point of the rent rise one (a 750% rates increase) is to stop rent rises altogether, not to bring in more revenue.
It’s a happy coincidence though. I mean, the point of massive smoking excise is to curb smoking. But the extra cash doesn’t hurt
His own press releases for those proposals have forecast almost zero extra revenue for those ideas. >He's been pretty upfront about some big rate rises for vacant properties "[However in practice, we anticipate relatively little revenue would be collected via this vacancy levy](https://www.jonathansri.com/vacant)" > or properties that raise rents. " [The Greens do not expect any significant extra rates revenue from this plan](https://www.jonathansri.com/rentfreeze)" The question remains, how he's going to pay for this. Is he cutting existing programs or raising rates?
Probably cut forecasted hideously expensive road upgrades that will do nothing but create congestion. You wouldn’t believe how many millions of dollars goes into a single kilometre of road.
Just cancel the toll road tunnel they want to build along Gympie road to Carseldine.
We need a congestion charge.
This years transport budget was 2.38 billion. This is 2,380 million. The roads resurfacing was $103 million. The upcoming projects for reducing congestion are 20+ billion over the next several years. $170million for buses will result in an immediate reduction in not only maintenance costs, but the reduced car volumes are likely to save hundreds of millions.
Rates should have been indexed to inflation, but they aren't, so we have to raise them with a big hoo haa anyway.
Aren’t rates based on land values? Which do rise with (or probably outpace) inflation?
Maybe the $9 billion tunnel
They just won three federal seats in Brisbane. So I wouldn't say they have no prospect of holding any power in BCC, given one federal seat translates to something like 4 council seats.
Jonathan will never get my vote. Egomaniac with a messiah complex who pretends to be someone different but is just as cold and calculating as all the other people he rails against. He fell in love with his own bullshit story and is just another upper middle class kid pretending to be poor. He is willing to say whatever he thinks will get him votes and isn’t interested in ever delivering for people.
Rusted on Labor voter detected
You're not wrong!
Hard to trust anything Jonathan Sriranganathan says as he still hasn't answered key questions about their rent reform proposals, even when he was asked directly on reddit.
There are roughly 900 000 voters in Brisbane. I've been much more responsive to questions on Reddit than any other Brisbane politician I'm aware of. The implication that I'm untrustworthy or 'dodging questions' because I haven't had time to respond to every single comment and question on a reddit thread is setting an unreasonable standard that no individual human candidate is ever going to be able to meet. Send me an email at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if you have a genuine, good-faith question that I've overlooked.
I specifically called you out previously for not answering questions and you didn't answer my questions yet you answered all the other easy questions.
Why don't you just ask it again?
He literally gave you the way to contact him and get the answers you wanted, send him an email and if the answer isn't sufficient come back and post it to the subreddit and tag him
I actually contacted the office to ask for a reply and they said he can only respond to messages he has time for.
I mean send the email then post the reply back here and we can all see right?
I can give you a screenshot but if I went to the trouble of doing it, would you even believe me?
It's 33 degrees, why is Sri still wearing a beanie? Accept you're bald and move on.
High frequency to where? People don’t want to go into the city anymore.
It's all in the link.
That's kind of the point, Brisbane's hub/spoke public transport design isn't appropriate for its evolving transport needs. Making travel that bypasses the CBD hopefully more viable and relieve congestion as a result.
Buses are a good stop gap solution, but we desperately need more trains and possibly tram lines. Generally speaking, buses stop more frequently and closer distances, then trams and then trains. It would also be great to allow rezoning, so density could be increased but in the meantime baby steps.
I just did a quick google. There are about 2.5million rentals in Australia. Multiply this by an extremely modest $500,000 per rental. See the problem?