Queenslanders are slowly returning to public transport even amid a slew of public holidays and transport disruptions, while Brisbane vehicle trips rapidly edge closer to pre-COVID levels.
TransLink data shows that in August, bus patronage across the state tipped 8.5 million trips – or 76.4 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
Rail patronage increased almost 10 per cent in August from July, reaching 3.6 million trips or 69.2 per cent of pre-COVID patronage.
Transport Minister Mark Bailey said he wanted to see the increased patronage continued through Christmas.
"Despite work from home arrangements, seeing patronage at this level is a good sign as we continue to invest in the network to deliver easy and convenient public transport across the state,” he said.
During September, when public holidays and long weekends impacted patronage, figures dipped slightly back down to 72.6 per cent of pre-COVID levels for buses.
Passenger trips (millions) |
Jul 2022 |
Aug 2022 |
Sep 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
Bus |
7.1 |
8.5 |
7.3 |
Rail |
3.0 |
3.6 |
3.4 |
Ferry |
0.3 |
0.3 |
0.3 |
Tram |
0.8 |
0.8 |
0.8 |
Total |
11.2 |
13.2 |
11.8 |
The Gold Coast light rail performed most strongly across August and September, tipping 91.9 per cent of pre-COVID patronage levels in September with 800,000 trips.
Ferries, which saw the slowest return to pre-pandemic levels, managed to tick over 50 per cent of pre-COVID patronage figures in August and recorded more than 300,000 trips in September.
Across the network, patronage figures continue to hover about 70 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
Mr Bailey said TransLink's smart ticketing trial, allowing adult commuters to use a debit or credit card to tap on and off a train, would now roll out to the Caboolture, Redcliffe Peninsula and Sunshine Coast-Gympie North lines.
"Rolling this system out on our train network has happened with great pace, which will continue until the entire south-east Queensland train network is online," he said.
The new figures come as Brisbane City Council releases its draft bus network review for public consultation, set to overhaul the bus routes city-wide ahead of Brisbane Metro and Cross River Rail launching in two years' time.
"At peak times there are currently more than 385 buses jamming up the Cultural Centre Station, which is a result of our current over-reliance on direct bus journeys from the suburbs to the CBD," council transport chair Ryan Murphy said.
Busy roads, growing congestion
While public transport figures remain lower than pre-COVID, main roads throughout the city are facing growing congestion, but still have not returned completely to 2019 daily traffic counts.
An analysis of Brisbane City Council traffic data from 2019 to 2022 shows that Coronation Drive and Kingsford Smith Drive remain the busiest roads in the city, taking out the top 10 busiest roads across the four years to September 2022.
In August 2019, before the pandemic, an average of 74,056 cars travelled down the 2.46-kilometre Coronation Drive between Toowong and Milton daily, marking the most vehicles on a main road across the council's road network.
At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, just 44,019 cars drove down Coronation Drive; a 40 per cent decrease in daily traffic.
But traffic has almost returned to the pre-pandemic levels. In August 2022, an average of 69,172 vehicles used Coronation Drive, taking seven-and-a-half minutes to do so — just 6 per cent fewer trips than August 2019.
Brisbane's second-busiest road across the four years was Kingsford Smith Drive, even with years of intensive roadworks along its 5.5 kilometre length from Breakfast Creek in Newstead to Southern Cross Way at Eagle Farm.
In August 2019, an average of 59,267 vehicles travelled down Kingsford Smith Drive daily.
During Brisbane's first lockdown in April 2020, traffic dropped 33 per cent to just 39,458 cars daily.
In comparison, in August this year, Kingsford Smith Drive carried 72,517 vehicles, with an average trip time of 13 minutes; a 22 per cent increase in daily vehicles on pre-pandemic levels, and making it the busiest road post-pandemic in the council network.
While Kingsford Smith Drive and Coronation Drive consistently carried the most cars each month over the four years, regardless of COVID, neither were the slowest road.
Across 2021 and 2022, the 9.4-kilometre Ipswich Road and Bradfield Highway corridor between Fortitude Valley and Moorooka was consistently the slowest in the afternoon peak.
It took more than half an hour for each of the 69,771 cars daily to traverse the busy road in September 2021, at an average speed of 10.1 kilometres.
In July 2020, the speed limit on parts of Ipswich Road through Annerley was dropped from 60kph to 50kph over safety concerns.
But since COVID, vehicle trips across the suburbs have also altered: In Brisbane's west, the notorious choke point of Moggill Road is still recording fewer cars daily than its busiest month of 2019, when 36,659 vehicles traversed the 3.3 kilometre thoroughfare in February.
Vehicle trips have remained consistently lower across 2022, with a 10 per cent decrease in daily trips to 32,723 in February 2022 — when floods hit Brisbane — and an average of 31,200 vehicles daily in August this year.
