Latest update - 29 November 2021
Work is just beginning on the pedestrian and cycling bridge between Kangaroo Point and the CBD. I'm very proud that we managed to secure funding and cross-party support for this bridge, but I remain concerned that the LNP is being a little too reckless about removing trees near the landing sites rather than working around them. The mayor has announced that a restaurant or bar will be built on the bridge (on a second level above the main thoroughfare) but we haven't yet seen any details about how delivery and service vehicles will access the site to drop off goods etc.
The council has also just released new draft concept designs and a little more information about the Toowong and St Lucia bridges. During this round of consultation, I encourage residents to highlight that as part of delivering the bridges, BCC also needs to allocate funding towards safe, convenient pedestrian and cycling connections to get to the bridges. There are separate online surveys for the St Lucia bridge and the Toowong bridge. If you do give feedback via the surveys or the face-to-face consultations (see above links for session details) I hope you will also reiterate the importance of preserving existing trees and offsetting any losses of useable green space through the creation of new green space nearby.
Back in 2015, when I first started advocating for a bridge between West End and Toowong, a lot of people told me "That's a good idea, but it'll never happen." We had the usual questions along the lines of "But Jonno, even if you're elected, the Greens won't have a majority, so will you have any power to achieve any of this stuff?" These bridges are a great example of how even having just a single Greens councillor in the chamber can help shift the parameters of debate and win broader support for our ideas. In a city where the majority of elected representatives still act like cars are the only way for people to move around, bold proposals like this can help catalyse a wider shift in transport planning culture and government priorities.
One of the most important but under-acknowledged benefits of the West End-Toowong bridge is that it will connect the high-density precinct in the south-west corner of West End to the Toowong train station and the Springfield and Ipswich train lines. Someone living or working on that side of the Kurilpa peninsula will have a short walk or ride over the bridge, and then it's just a 10 to 15-minute train ride to get to places like Sherwood and Corinda. A visitor travelling from Darra train station will be able to get to Orleigh Park, West End in under 25 minutes without using a car.
These are the kinds of inter-suburb connectivity improvements that have been overlooked in Brisbane for a long time, but they're super important. This is the next step in a quiet revolution of reducing reliance on cars and embracing active transport for our city.
12 May 2021
A simple summary of the results of our online vote regarding the proposed bridges from West End to Toowong and St Lucia is available at this link.
31 March 2021
Amy MacMahon and I have just sent off our joint submission to BCC regarding proposed locations for the West End bridges. You can read our submission via this link. Our submission focussed heavily on the potential impacts to public space and immediately surrounding communities, as this was the main issue of concern that residents were raising with us.
February 2021
Since 2016, the Greens have been advocating for new footbridges between Kangaroo Point and the CBD, and West End and Toowong. We’ve also expressed interest in a footbridge between West End and St Lucia, but have said that we consider the Toowong bridge and a new CityCat stop for the western side of West End are both higher priorities than a St Lucia bridge.
Brisbane City Council has now confirmed funding and gone out to tender for the Kangaroo Point bridge, and is seeking feedback from residents about possible locations for the Toowong and St Lucia bridges.
BCC Consultation Process
BCC has announced three possible locations for the Toowong-West End bridge, and three possible locations for the St Lucia-West End bridge, with their ‘official’ public consultation period closing at the end of March 2021. Crucially, BCC is only asking residents which of the three nominated locations they prefer, as opposed to whether both bridges have general public support.
Council info about the proposed bridge options is available via these links:
Elected Greens Representatives' Consultation Process
We believe the BCC consultation process has some significant gaps and deficiencies. These include insufficient protections against someone filling out the anonymous online survey multiple times on different devices, and concerns that the questions council has posed don’t distinguish between opposition to particular locations, versus general opposition to all bridge proposals, thus diminishing the quality of the feedback.
So as well as a public forum on Saturday, 27 February, and other forms of on-the-ground community outreach, we’re running an online poll to guide what position we take as elected representatives. The more responses the poll receives, the more weight the outcome will carry and the more influential it will be on our decision-making.
Please click on this link to vote in our poll. We ask participants to provide contact details and create a voting account to help guard against fraudulent duplicate votes.
Our polls show the results in real-time, and include optional preferential voting, which means participants can rank multiple bridge landing locations and clarify whether they’d prefer ‘no bridge’ over one of the particular options BCC has proposed.
My rough ‘options analysis’ as of February 2021
All of the bridge landing options BCC has proposed arguably have some negative impacts. I haven’t yet formed a final view on which options I officially support, and will wait to see the results of our poll, but I’ve been hearing a lot of feedback from residents which is inevitably shaping my views.
The council has published some estimates on its website for how many people are likely to use each bridge location, but I don’t think these trip estimates are reliable or worth paying much attention to, because the numbers for the St Lucia bridge assume the Toowong bridge doesn’t exist, and vice versa. The council’s trip estimate modelling is heavily skewed by proximity to existing public transport stops. The transport modelling algorithms estimate higher trip volumes for bridge landings that are close to existing bus and ferry stops.
But I think that rather than basing the bridge location decision on proximity to existing public transport services, it would be preferable to pick the best bridge location in terms of active transport routes, and then add nearby public transport stops if necessary.
As such, I'm more interested in how many local residents think they are likely to use a particular bridge, as opposed to how many people Brisbane City Council modelling says are likely to use a bridge.
For the Toowong bridge, at this stage I’m leaning towards supporting Option A, because:
- It will have a smoother incline, without the need for a big curling ramp at the end
- There’s an opportunity to link it to a larger new green space on the former ABC site at Toowong
- It will likely have less impact on river navigation and recreational river uses than a bridge that’s closer to the bend in the river
- It will offer a more direct connection between Riverside Drive, West End and the bicentennial bikeway in Toowong
For the St Lucia bridge, it’s a harder call to make and I’m genuinely still undecided.
Option A seems likely to have the biggest impact on existing public parkland, landing in the middle of both Orleigh Park and Guyatt Park, and arguably duplicating an existing cross-river link already provided by the Citycat terminals.
Option B is much less likely to directly impact existing residential homes or established trees, but lands partway along Ryan St, and does not directly connect to key public and active transport corridors.
Option C (the Boundary St-Keith St alignment) is the most direct route between UQ St Lucia and the commercial centre of West End. It also offers the added benefit of a more direct connection for residents riding to and from Fairfield, Annerley and the PA Hospital to the heart of West End (via the existing Eleanor Schonell bridge). However the current design proposed by BCC for Option C also involves acquiring three residential homes, could remove quite a few large trees, and would result in quite a long component of the bridge stretching overland almost as far as Paradise Street, arguably reducing neighbourhood amenity.
I’ve sought more information from council about whether it’s possible to land a lower-impact bridge at the southern end of Boundary St without removing established trees or residential homes, and will publish answers on this page if/when I receive them.
Thinking strategically
A few residents have asked me whether it’s possible to get the funding for one or both West End footbridges diverted to other more urgently needed local infrastructure or services. My analysis of the current political landscape is that this would be quite difficult. The LNP administration are emotionally invested in fulfilling their public commitment for ‘five new green bridges,’ and the Lord Mayor has already shown his reluctance to divert funding elsewhere.
Last year, BCC undertook public consultation on the proposal for one of the five green bridges to be built between Bellbowrie and Wacol. Apparently the majority of residents in those suburbs who provided feedback said they didn’t want the green bridge, and preferred the money to be spent on other local infrastructure. But even though both Bellbowrie and Wacol are represented by LNP Councillors, the LNP Lord Mayor still declined to support this approach. The Bellbowrie green bridge proposal was scrapped, and the council is now looking for another location along the river for its fifth green bridge. Meanwhile the suburbs of Bellbowrie and Wacol missed out on any investment.
So if local residents of Brisbane’s inner-south and inner-west oppose bridges from St Lucia and Toowong to West End, there’s certainly no guarantee that the money which would’ve been spent on those bridges will be reinvested in other local projects.
Addendum: As of early March 2021, we have just managed to get hold of some of the formal reports that were produced internally for council, including the 2020 Draft Alignment Study produced by GHD Consultants. You can find these documents at this link.
Here, again, is the link to the online poll. Please click through and cast your vote on your preferred bridge locations.
PREVIOUSLY:
February, 2020
I've been advocating for better active transport connections for the inner-south side since before I became a city councillor. Providing direct connections for pedestrians and cyclists helps reduce traffic congestion and car-dependency, and ends up saving council money in the long-term by reducing the costs of building and maintaining roads.
I'm very supportive of a Kangaroo Point-CBD footbridge, and I'm pleased the council has agreed to my requests to fund the construction of this bridge as a high priority.
I've also been advocating for a West End-Toowong footbridge, but before starting any work, I’d like to see council develop a business case for it (which they’ve said they will do), and I think the entire business case and feasibility study should be released to the public.
I would still need a bit more convincing before supporting a West End-St Lucia bridge, as I’m not yet sure that the benefits justify the costs.
As explained below, I don’t support any of the inner-city bridges carrying conventional buses. I will of course keep an open mind about emerging technologies and changing transport needs, such as the rise of self-driving demand-responsive minibuses, but until I’m presented with strong evidence to the contrary, I don’t think bus bridges are a good idea.
I think it’s extremely important that any green space losses associated with the bridges are offset by the creation of new public parks in West End and Kangaroo Point, above and beyond the parkland already identified as necessary in council’s existing planning documents.
Importantly, if trees need to be removed, the project team should have to take responsibility for finding appropriate locations and planting replacement trees nearby. It’s not enough to just pay an offset levy into the general tree planting budget without actually finding space for where the replacement trees can go.
Naturally, I think it’s very important that the bridges have roofs to protect pedestrians and cyclists from sun and rain, as well as other sustainable design features such as rainwater capture and solar panels if appropriate. More generally, I think we should explore opportunities to design these bridges as useable public spaces as opposed to just transport thoroughfares.
22 November, 2019:
Last week we received a briefing from council officers about the three new green bridges proposed for the Gabba Ward. They were able to give us a lot more detail about the Kangaroo Point-to-CBD footbridge, which is much further advanced than the other two in terms of planning.
From the information we were provided, it seems like the proposed footbridges from West End to Toowoong and West End to St Lucia have barely gotten any further than the drawing board.
Here’s what we know so far. I’ll add more detail to this page as more information becomes available and in response to other questions we receive from residents.
The LNP have estimated a total projected budget of $825 million for all five bridges (keeping in mind that the bike bridge over Breakfast Creek will be very cheap, and the Bellbowrie bus bridge will cost a lot more than the other bridges). The LNP have allocated $550 million in council’s own budget forward estimates, which they say will cover approximately 2/3 of the cost of delivering these bridges. They’re hoping to get funding from State and Federal Governments to cover the other 1/3 of the cost.
I’ve listed some of the main details about the Kangaroo Point bridge first, followed by the other two inner-city bridges. There’s a lot more info about the KP bridge (including a report on the key findings from the business case) at this link. I’ve included my own commentary and advice to residents in italics.
Kangaroo Point to CBD Green Bridge
How much will it cost and how long will it take?
Estimated total budget is $190 million. Once detailed designs, consultation, government approvals and contract tenders are all finalised, the actual construction process would be expected to take 18 to 24 months.
Where will it land (and why)?
BCC is proposing to connect the bridge from near the Alice St-Edward St roundabout, to the end of Scott St at Kangaroo Point
The riverbank near the intersection of Alice St and Edward St is quite low, which makes this bridge more challenging because you have to make it high enough for boats to pass underneath safely (they are aiming for a similar height to other bridges like Goodwill and Captain Chook). One of the main reasons Scott St is preferred over Thornton St is that the slope of the bridge would be more gradual, whereas if you go from Alice to Thornton, it will end up a lot steeper. The key findings report has a bit more detail about alignment options.
Apparently a lot of different options and factors have been considered in terms of CBD-side landing points. The Alice-Edward location probably works out a lot cheaper than negotiating with private landowners further to the north along the CBD riverfront. It also delivers a better connection to the Botanic Gardens.
It seems like council is now leaning pretty heavily towards landing the bridge at Scott St, and will only reconsider this location if there’s really really strong opposition for some reason during the consultation and the public calls for it to land at Thornton St instead. I see no reason not to trust the council planners and independent consultants who’ve concluded that on balance, Scott St makes the better landing point.
What about the Story Bridge Underpass and Connections to the Bridge?
The current Story Bridge pedestrian underpass between Thornton St and Deakin St is not wheelchair accessible and needs a significant (and expensive) upgrade to remove the steps and make it more useable for wheelchairs, prams and bikes. If the bridge lands at Scott St, BCC will be weighing up the pros and cons of upgrading the Thornton St underpass, or creating a new wheelchair accessible underpass from Main St to Deakin St (north of Darragh St).
An underpass connection is being treated as an essential element of the bridge project itself, but feedback from residents about how best to do it will probably have some influence over council decision-making.
I think it is particularly important for residents to give really strong feedback that at the same time as the footbridge is built and the underpass is improved, council also completes the missing sections of Riverwalk on the eastern side of Kangaroo Point.
A key benefit of this footbridge is connecting active transport commuters from the eastern suburbs through Kangaroo Point and directly into the CBD. Completing the riverwalk so that high volumes of bikes don’t have to mix with cars along Thorn St and Lambert St is a crucial part of this.
What’s happening to the Thornton St Ferry Terminal?
Council officers have told me that changes to the ferry network or the Thornton St ferry terminal are out of scope for the bridge project. However it’s possible that the Thornton St terminal might have to close down temporarily during part of the construction period.
When designing the bridge and evaluating design options, the project team has been proceeding on the assumption that a ferry terminal will be retained at Thornton St. It is of course possible that down the track, after the bridge is completed, council’s transport planners might look at ferry usage data and conclude that the stop is no longer needed or should be relocated
Will the bridge carry buses too, or just pedestrians and bikes?
It’s a definite no to buses on the Kangaroo Point to CBD green bridge. If you look at a map of where the bridge is proposed and how that might link to existing major road corridors, you’ll probably see why.
Will we lose trees and public green space?
Yes, quite possibly. Council will want to minimise the landing footprints of the bridge, and footbridges don’t have to take up anywhere near as much space on land as bus or car bridges. But there will still be some impacts on public parkland.
I think it’s really important for residents to provide strong feedback to council that you don’t want to lose green space as a result of this project. It’s possible for council to allocate a small proportion of the project budget towards buying more land elsewhere in Kangaroo Point to create a new public park that offsets the loss of trees and green space caused by the bridge.
This bridge project represents an amazing opportunity to get a new public park within the Kangaroo Point peninsula, which will help cater for our rapidly growing population, but it’s important for residents to raise this need really strongly as often as possible
West End to Toowong and St Lucia Footbridges
How much will they cost and how long will they take?
Council says they haven’t yet conducted detailed costings for these two bridges. They are at such an early stage in planning these bridges, that unless there’s a big shift in political priorities and they allocate more resources to delivering these bridges faster, they probably won’t start construction for at least 5 years, and won’t be finished until 2027 at the earliest.
If you extrapolate from the fact that out of a total $825 million estimate, they’re anticipating:
- $190 million for the Kangaroo Point bridge, which is a longer and more technically complex project
- maybe $20-$40 million for the Breakfast Creek bike link
- and upwards of $280 million for the Bellbowrie to Moggill green bridge
that probably means around $280-$300 million for the two West End bridges (so roughly $150 million each). St Lucia to West End will probably be slightly cheaper than other footbridges as it’s a shorter stretch of river to cross.
Where will they land?
Council’s consultation documents show notional landings for the bridges from Archer St, Toowong to near Forbes St, West End, and from Boundary St, West End to Keith St, St Lucia. The officers have said repeatedly that these are just general indicative landing points rather than precise locations. It sounds like BCC hasn’t settled on exact landing points for these bridges yet, so there’s definitely time to advocate for different locations.
A couple of residents have asked whether the Toowong Bridge would be better off landing on the former ABC site rather than going through or over residential properties on Archer St. I’ll be asking more information about this, but from what I’ve learned so far, it sounds like the benefit of landing it slightly to the south of the ABC site is that it can connect more directly to the Toowong train station and shopping centre via the pedestrian link next to 29 Archer St. I will of course continue to advocate for the former ABC site to be brought back into public ownership for use as parkland and community facilities.
There are a lot of issues that have to be worked through in evaluating the exact locations of both proposed footbridges, in terms of avoiding local heritage sites like the Cranbrook Place Aboriginal Sorry Site at Orleigh Park, minimising the loss of established trees, and ensuring optimal active transport connections to existing bikeways and pedestrian corridors.
As with the Kangaroo Point footbridge, it’s crucial that residents provide strong feedback to council that you don’t want to lose green space as a result of these projects. We should be insisting that council deliver new public parks in West End to offset any green space that’s lost as a result of these bridge landings. I’m asking all residents to email [email protected] and demand that if the bridges do go ahead, you want a new public park in West End to compensate for the lost riverside green space.
Will the bridges carry buses?
The LNP have not yet firmly and explicitly ruled out the possibility of the bridges carrying buses, but I think this is extremely unlikely, and at this stage I don’t support either bridge carrying buses (although I’m keeping an open mind).
This next map helps show why I don’t think there’s a strong case for a bus bridge from Boundary St to UQ.
Footbridges will likely be around 6 metres wide, whereas a bus bridge that also carries bikes and pedestrians would have to be at least 12 metres wide. Designing the Toowong and St Lucia bridges to carry buses (as well as the necessary road connections) would probably add $50 million to $100 million to the cost of each bridge, so to justify that much additional cost, as well as the ongoing costs of running additional bus services, council needs to be really sure that bus services would be well-utilised.
If a bridge were built that also carries buses, most residents who live in the blue shaded area would probably still find it more convenient (and cheaper) to walk over the bridge to get to UQ, even if there are frequent buses.
Residents who live within the red circle will probably find that existing CityCat services are just as convenient to get to uni as walking a longer distance to get to a connecting bus stop.
And residents who live within the purple circles already have access to high-frequency bus services to uni that are reasonably reliable, via the busway and existing Eleanor Schonell Green Bridge, so while buses running down Boundary St might be slightly more direct, the fact that those services would be running through the low-speed cultural and commercial heart of Boundary St probably makes them a less attractive proposition.
So bus services running between West End and St Lucia are really only going to be useful for residents in the central part of West End, or for students and staff heading from UQ into West End. Anyone living further away in other parts of the city is going to find it quicker to catch a bus that runs along the existing dedicated busway, and most people living closer to the bridge will prefer to walk over for free, rather than catching a bus.
Personally I’m very sceptical that there will be enough demand to justify the high cost of running services and building a bus bridge.
Thinking about the broader public transport network as a whole, the case for buses on both the Toowong and St Lucia bridges is pretty weak, because all of West End’s main road corridors are so heavily congested. Montague Rd, Boundary St, Hardgrave Rd and Vulture St are all quite busy roads, which means bus services running along Coronation Drive and the dedicated busways are always likely to be quicker and more reliable than buses coming through West End.
I know there are quite a few residents living up on Highgate Hill who say they would use an east-west bus route running over the river to Toowong and Auchenflower, but compared to other routes and possible uses of public money, I don’t think this is likely to be a high priority. The feedback I’ve been hearing so far from residents living closer to Forbes St and Riverside Drive is that they definitely don’t want a West End-Toowong bridge to carry buses.
Is this consultation genuine?
One of the frustrating things about council consultation processes like this one is that you’re never sure how much weight they are giving to the resident feedback they receive. It sometimes feels like your comments just go into a void and no-one ever reads them.
Apart from the short timeframes, I think there are two fundamental problems with this kind of council consultation:
- Residents can’t easily see or hear what other residents and stakeholders are saying. Already, I’ve had a resident tell me that “Everyone they’ve spoken to” is opposed to one of the bridges, while another resident said “All of us down here love this bridge.” It would foster greater understanding within the community if council facilitated open discussions where everyone had an opportunity to easily engage with one another’s feedback if they wished, as opposed to all of us just giving closed feedback. That way, residents who might not personally see value in a particular project proposal might understand how it benefits a different demographic of residents.
- Not enough information has been provided to allow us to form an informed view. People can give more meaningful feedback on a project when they have access to more information about current and future commuter demand, traffic volumes, population trends, secondary impacts etc. In the case of the Toowong and St Lucia bridges, council hasn’t done a huge amount of detailed research into design options, but they would still have plenty of traffic data, as well as info about how many students UQ is aiming to accommodate in the future, how many people are expected to move into Toowong and West End etc.
By failing to provide this basic information in an easily accessible format, council fosters distrust (because residents feel like council is hiding something), polarises the electorate, and diminishes the quality of feedback it’s receiving from residents.
Having said that, I think council is genuinely interested in what residents have to say about how important these projects are, and what elements and features should be prioritised. Institutional stakeholders like the University of Queensland are pushing strongly for a bridge directly to the campus, so if residents are expressing alternative views, that can help balance out the conversation.
Unlike private development projects, where the LNP-dominated council doesn’t really care very much at all what residents think, the council is more receptive to input on public projects. The mayor doesn’t want to spend lots of money on projects that are unpopular and will lose votes. So if an element of a project receives a lot of negative feedback at the early stages (before they lock in designs and go out to tender), it’s definitely possible to get council to make changes.
If council receives really strong support for a particular bridge, but can’t secure funding for the project from the state or federal government, BCC is likely to push ahead with the project and fund the whole thing itself. Whereas if public support for a bridge is not quite as strong, and the council can’t get funding from a higher level of government, they might just delay the project and deprioritise it. So providing positive feedback about the elements you do like is just as important as providing criticisms about what needs to change.
I encourage residents to provide as much feedback as you can during the council’s consultation process. If there are other questions you’d like answered, let me know and I’ll add them to this document.