For the amount of money already lost from removing fuel excise, how many km of bikeway could have been built? How many km of real metro could have been funded for one of Australia’s capital cities?
IF YOU BUILD A BIKE LANE THAT DOESN'T CONNECT TO ANOTHER BIKE LANE THEN YOU DIDN'T BUILD A BIKE LANE
People on bikes ride like this anyway. Better sign would have been “Drive like everyone else’s life depends on you.” Or “Drive like you’re operating heavy machinery in public… because you are.”
This is pretty cutting on a day our public transport network is completely overwhelmed. Brisbane needs to be a lot smarter with what it’s got. It also needs to be a lot more ambitious with what it builds.
Since major infrastructure takes 10-20 years to deliver, the best time to start the planning, designing, and constructing process was 20 years ago, the next best time is now.
Because population is growing. Fuel prices are rising. Emissions need to fall. Global instability will lead to more future fuel shortages.
“Focusing development at existing transport hubs” does not solve this alone. The reality no one wants to admit is that we NEED more infrastructure coverage.
Widespread rail maintenance coinciding with a fuel price spike. Here’s the result.
If only we had a complementary high capacity transport network so there was a level of intentional redundancy built into our public transit.
www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/s...
Not only do I think we should build a real underground rail system, I think we should call it the Brisbane Underground System. So our metro is the BUS and our buses are the Metro.
IMHO as Brisbane continues its rapid growth, the current in-window ideas are not sufficient; the edge ideas will help; but the outside-the-window ideas have the planning logic, ambition, and potential benefit to improve the city not just tread water. Sadly they aren’t even close to mainstream.
Outside the window: congestion pricing, genuine metro networks, major road reallocation, active transport as a *higher* priority than cars, big inner‑city mass‑transit spines, medium density zoning at every major transport node.
In Brisbane the window has some progressive ideas but is still firmly car‑anchored.
Current government is pushing the window further carward and motonormative.
Inside: more surface rail, better buses, active transport.
At the edge: mode integration, metro‑style frequency, stronger mode‑shift.
The Overton window is the set of ideas the public sees as acceptable. It shapes what feels normal vs radical. With transport and urbanism it describes ideas from road expansion to major transit investment, reallocating street space, or low density to missing middle to high density development.
Brisbane Transport and the Overton Window
Spoiler Warning: My opinions extend way outside the window.
Long overdue. Given personal transport contributes even more emissions than freight, and the majority of personal transportation occurs as short trips within urban areas; what do you feel should be the federal government’s role in boosting public transport investment in our major cities?
As the laws are written, non e-bikes will continue as normal. E-bikes can’t go over 10km/h on shared paths even if not using the motor.
There is one weird scenario at 22km/h where a regular bike would be fine, a scooter would get a $160 fine, and an e-bike a $500 fine. Poorly conceived legislation
If you want to ride the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail on an e-bike, do it before 1st of July. After that the speed limit for e-bikes will be 10km/h. If you are ambitious enough to do the end-to-end trail, it’ll need 16 hours of riding (plus stops) to complete.
Motonormativity is a strong force. A lot of people cannot comprehend that things can change.
The depressing thing in Brisbane is even many public transport advocates only want a slightly faster incremental delivery of what we already do. More bendy buses, maybe a track duplication if we are lucky. Bike lanes in 20 years instead of 50. Public transit vision and ambition is dead in QLD.
Albanese telling people to reconsider driving is incredible optics.
Mate, you built a country where driving is mandatory. A country where cyclists, pedestrians, and anyone not using a car is treated as a second-class citizen.
Car-dependence is baked into every major policy you have architected.
It’s the perfect opportunity for the states to dust off their more ambitious public transport plans and commit to delivering them. What better time to run express through the public consultation process?
Too bad I live in Brisbane where the nearest train station is 4km away and the buses are crowded sweat-boxes that get stuck in traffic.
Luckily I’m dumb/brave enough to be a regular cycle commuter in this bike-hostile city anyway. So meh. Meh like Albos prime ministership.
To paraphrase “Switch to public transport, to save fuel for those who really need it”. Too bad every level of government has underfunded public transport for decades. Too bad our cities sprawl and exacerbated car dependency. Building resilient cities is a long term strategy, not a sound bite.
@10newsaus also using images of things that aren’t e-bikes.
And @9news.bsky.social, also failing to identity e-bikes.
Also not an e-bike @7news.bsky.social
If something like this is what you think of as an e-bike, then you don’t belong in any discussion about e-mobility.
It’s ok everyone. I have full confidence that in the coming days she will consider raising her alert level from Concerned to Troubled.
