Brisbane Transport

From Freepedia

Brisbane Transport is a division of the Brisbane City Council. It operates suburban bus services in Brisbane, Queensland,Australia, under the TransLink integrated public transport scheme. The Brisbane City Council also manages passenger ferry services, including CityCat catarmarans, on the Brisbane River, which is also part of the TransLink service. (Although Brisbane's CityTrains are not managed by the Brisbane City Council, they also use the TransLink integrated public transport scheme.)

Brisbane Transport is a business unit owned by the Brisbane City Council. Many of its services use the South-East Busway and the Inner-Northern Busway, which are grade separated from other roads and are served by large stations. The fleet is being steadily replaced with low-floor natural gas buses such as 217 Scania L94UB models, with 180 new MAN 18.310 low-floor gas buses to come, with a further option for 120. It currently operates over 700 buses and provided 53.1 million passenger trips in the 2004/2005 financial year, reportedly the highest since 1974.

Brisbane Bus, CityCat and City-Ferry information

For a list of routes, see TransLink (Brisbane) services

See also Brisbane City Council information about Bus services and CityCat and City-Ferry services for the Brisbane area

History

Brisbane Transport's origins go back to the creation of a single local government for metropolitan Brisbane in 1925. The city had an extensive privately built and operated tramway system dating from 1885, but these were socialised by the Brisbane City Council in 1925. The tramways were incorporated into the Council's Transport Department. The Council experimented with providing bus services in the 1920s but these proved impractical due to very poor road surface quality throughout Brisbane. The first permanent bus services were introduced in 1940 as a supplement to Brisbane's excellent and frequent tram services.

The first tram line to close was the Gregory Terrace route in 1947 due to the very steep grades on that line. Improved diesel engined buses could provide a faster and more efficient service between the City and Gregory Terrace. Trolleybuses were introduced on five routes in 1951, including the Gregory Terrace route.

In common with most other cities throughout the English-speaking world, Brisbane soon abandoned its twenty-two tram lines in favour of a transport system based on buses and freeways. The trams and trolleybuses ceased service in 1969.

In the 1990s Brisbane City Council corporatised its transport services to form Brisbane Transport, a Council-owned enterprise managed along business lines at arm's length from the Council of the day. Brisbane Transport's ferry services have been contracted out to a private operator, Metrolink Queensland.

The increased popularity and affordability of private car ownership throughout Australia since the 1940s resulted in Brisbane's public transport patronage levels falling steadily throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with resulting cuts in service frequencies that have made public transport an even more unattractive travel option for Brisbanites. This fall in patronage has been stanched recently by the introduction of a single integrated ticketing system for all of South East Queensland's public transport operators known as TransLink. The construction of grade-separated busways and the introduction of several high-frequency express routes known as bus upgrade zones (BUZ) has also seen patronage rise substantially for the first time in decades.