Planning moving forward on rail capacity solution for South East Queensland

The Palaszczuk Government is moving ahead with planning to deliver extra capacity on South-East Queensland’s rail network.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the Government was committed to transforming and revitalising the rail network to benefit Queenslanders and provide a more efficient public transport system that can cope with forecast demand.

“Increasing the capacity of our rail network is one of our top priorities, we are working to identify solutions,” Ms Trad said.

“Our assessment will include an investigation of elements of the Cross River Rail and Bus and Train projects to identify a preferred solution to address these capacity issues.

“It will also include a detailed assessment of the feasibility of introducing New Generation Signalling to the inner city rail network.

“Improved signalling would allow for a higher frequency of services on our most constrained part of the network, unlocking additional capacity that would benefit the entire region.

“Considerable cost and time savings will be achieved during this evaluation phase by using planning prepared as part of the previous projects – that work will not be wasted.”

“However, there will be no combination of buses and trains in the Cross River Rail design going forward.

“Buses and trains play different roles in our transport network and combining them in the same corridor does not make sense,” Ms Trad said.

Ms Trad said the project team would deliver an updated business case of a preferred project to be considered by Government.

“The Queensland Government will include a complete business case as part of a funding submission to Infrastructure Australia and the Federal Government for this urgently needed project,” she said.

“We will also seek to re-establish the ready-to-proceed status previously applied to the Cross River Rail project.”

For more information contact the project team on 1800 010 875.