GRAHAM Quirk's most expensive election promise in the Brisbane City Council election is a $1.5 billion metro system between the Gabba and Herston.

The stated goal of the BCC Metro is for buses to feed into interchanges at either end, with passengers catching a rubber tyre metro train for the final leg into the city, thereby removing the need for "200 buses per hour" to enter the CBD and freeing those buses up for use in the suburbs.

But with Cross River Rail having the same start and end point (Gabba and Herston) , and having bus interchanges proposed at these locations anyway, with an hourly passenger capacity two to three times higher, with a faster route to boot, it begs the question as to why BCC want a metro system essentially in parallel?

If BCC says passengers can change onto a metro train at the Gabba then they can equally change onto a cross river rail train too, right?

Cross River Rail can do exactly the same job as the metro in terms of relieving CBD bus congestion, in addition to the wider benefits it will have for trains travelling in from all points of the region.

There is a good reason why it is the number one infrastructure priority for SEQ.

GAVIN SEIPELT Seventeen Mile Rocks

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