On the Broad Gauge

Best mass transit solution for the Sunshine Coast

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:54:00 +0000

In the run up to last week's state election, there was a lot of talk about the best use of the CAMCOS corridor that runs between Beerwah (on the north coast rail line out of Brisbane) and Maroochydore Airport (via Caloundra West, Kawana Waters and Maroochydore). This line has been reserved for an extention of the QR Brisbane Citytrain network.

The Liberal National Candidates suggested the line should be brought forward between Caloundra and Maroochydore and possibly built as light rail.

There is a lot of angst about this project, partly because it is seen as a line that will simply suck life out of the Sunshine Coast and turn the Coast into dormitory suburbs for Brisbane. The fact that the line is designed as a QR interurban line with wide station spacing adds to the conception that it won't be any good for intracoastal trips. On the other hand, the Coast faces a serious shortage of employment and this means that easy access to the Brisbane metropolitan area employment base will be increasingly important. At the same time, I believe it is essential that business links between Brisbane and the coast are strengthened. It should be possible for businesses to locate in Maroochydore knowing that Brisbane is only a 90 minute train ride away (for visitors and clients).

I have come to the conclusion that one good way forward is to build the line, as proposed, to QR suburban standards, while at the same time negotiating a Karlsruhe-type solution for intracoastal trips. The Karlsruhe model is one where light rail vehicles are able to share tracks with regular suburban trains. These LRT vehicles can then travel in street medians and make more frequent stops than the suburban/interurban trains which provide longer distance travel.

It will be tricky, particularly getting QR on side, but I believe it is worth investigating further.

Raining

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:06:00 +0000

My new rainwater tank, installed just before Christmas, is now full and overflowing. I've connected the pump and it seems to have enough pressure to fill the upstairs loo. Hurrah!

I think I now need to go and sprinkle some fertilizer on the lawn. How decandent.

The cost of infrastructure provision

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:22:00 +0000

There has been a lot in the media lately (e.g. The Age, Jan 26) about housing affordability in Australia, and lack thereof. There are lots of reasons for this, and I haven't done the research to come to a firm opinion myself.

However, in the course of work I have come across something called the "IPA" (Integrated Planning Act, 1997) under which Queensland local governments levy infrastructure charges on developers to cover the cost of infrastructure.

In other words, if you are a developer wishing to create a suburban subdivision, say on the outskirts of Brisbane, you will need to come up with the money to, inter alia:

* build the necessary local streets
* upgrade any regional roads that are affected by the new subdivision
* build or upgrade sewers, local and regional
* build or upgrade stormwater drains, retarding basins and associated works
* build local parks
* build footpaths

Now this money has to come from somewhere, and the upshot that that potentially tens of thousands of dollars is added to the cost of each suburban house block for essential infrastructure costs.

I'm not naive and I know that money has to come from somewhere. Nonetheless, I do wonder if this is the most equitable way of providing infrastructure. I can't help feel that regional infrastructure (such as main roads and trunk sewers) should be funded by the community as a whole. I am sure - though I'm willing to be proved wrong - that this is how the extensive suburban development of the 50s through to the 90s was funded.

Weather version of Murphy's law

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:37:00 +0000

I had a large (5000L) rainwater take installed and plumbed during the week. I am looking forward to being able to water a (small) lawn again, and being able to water vege patch without treking up and down the garden with a watering can.

The weather seems to have returned to the pattern of 'rain 5 days from now' - the 5 days away never actually arrive.

Is there a version of Murphy's Law in operation here? Plenty of rain - until you try and catch it!

Now is the time to plan for the future

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:20:00 +0000

So the overheated economy has come off the boil. In fact, it's probably boiled over and put out the gas.

That will take a lot of pressure off Australia's infrastructure. The transport system in particular has been creaking at the seams lately under incredible patronage growth, and there has been a huge rush to 'do something' about it. Sydney has invented and dropped more metro schemes than you can shake a stick at. Melbourne has the Eddington 'plan'. Brisbane has 14 billion dollars' worth of rail tunnels on the agenda. You get the picture.

In my mind the economic downturn, combined with lower petrol prices, now gives us the opportunity to take a breath and start to plan properly again for the future. We can start to ask some serious questions: how much growth are we really likely to see over the coming decade? where will it be? where do we want it to be? what form will it take?

Last time there was a serious economic downturn in Victoria (in the early 90s following the collapse of Pyramid and Tricontinental), Melbourne got remade. It was changed from a run-down manufacturing city to a city of culture, entertainment and shopping. Unfortunately at the same time the road lobby managed to change the city into a freeway city, with hundreds of kilometres of freeway construction undertaken.

Maybe this time we'll be able to take the time to think and do it right. So that next time there's a boom we won't be caught out again.

Just briefly

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:15:00 +0000

The worst storm in decades *was* pretty fierce. Driving through it with 10m visibility and debris over the road was, um, interesting. If we'd known at the time how bad it was we probably wouldn't have set out.

The worst hit areas are only a few km from where we live and we didn't even lose power. Lucky.

It's hardly stopped raining since. Pity the order for a rainwater tank is still sitting on the kitchen table :-(

Inner City Rail and Brisban rail system

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:09:00 +0000

I have been hum-ing and ha-ing about what to write in a follow-up post on the ICRCS. After the release by the government of proposals a fortnight ago, there was a lot of buzz and then silence. A lot of the feedback (particularly in the Courier Mail) was very negative. In the rail and transport 'fan' community there was also a lot of discussion about why various things were proposed and why others weren't.

I have been giving quite a few informal briefings at work on what the project was and why it found what it did, but I don't feel at liberty to talk outside about it as much as I might like. Hopefully, the government will release more information from the very extensive study reports soon.

What I do want to say though is that Brisbane/SEQ badly needs a strategic rail network review. Something that looks at where the city is growing over the next 20-30 years (and beyond) and what rail network will be needed to serve it. This needs to not just tot up the existing SEQIPP suburban extensions, but also look at trunk and middle suburb needs (Newstead - Bulimba - Hamilton - Northgate ? Spring Hill - Newmarket - Stafford - Petrie?) to keep the network effective.

The ICRCS makes a start for the inner city, but the rest still needs to be done.

ICRCS findings announced!

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:56:00 +0000

In a press release today, Premier Anita Bligh and Transport Minister John Mickel have announced the findings of the Inner City Rail Capacity Study. The study itself hasn't been released to the public yet (stay tuned!) but the press release and associated maps released to MX newspaper confirm the basic study findings: the need for one new cross-city corridor from the Gold Coast line by 2016 and a second new corridor from the Ipswich Line to the Caboolture line by 2026.

The whole lot is expected to cost over $14 billion, and Infrastructure Australia (the Federal government's infrastructure fund) is being asked to contribute.

The press release also releases some interesting figures that show the scale of the demand:

Ms Bligh said the Inner City Rail Capacity Study found that in 2006 more than 44,000 people used city train services each day during the two hour morning peak period.

“By 2016 demand is forecast to reach between 70,000 and 80,000 people in peak periods and by 2026 increase further to between 105,000 and 130,000 people,” she said.

I'm quite excited the project is slowly being released, but I am a little worried that it might be being oversold with phrases like "world-class 21st century underground rail network".

What the project is is a way of providing capacity in the congested inner city for services from the outer suburbs. Along the way, there are a few underground stations to tap into various opportunities, but it is not really an underground 'network' as such.

Edited to add

Immediately after posting this, I discovered that the project web site has been updated with various documents. I am a bit surprised at what has been released and for the truly geeky I would recommend the "rail operations review" (warning: 5MB pdf file)

Time for the Hamilton NorthshoreTrain

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:25:00 +0000

The Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA) has released details of the Master Plan for the Hamilton Northshore site.

Those of you know know the area know that it is served by Kingsford Smith Drive, which gets incredibly busy. Heaven knows how it is going to cope with the 26,000 people who are expected to work there every day!

Luckily, the master plan suggests the extension of the Doomben line into the site - an extension of less than a kilometre.

I sincerely hope the state government takes them up on this option. Otherwise, chaos can be expected.

Now it's two tunnels!

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:16:00 +0000

Information about the Inner City Rail Capacity Study is dribbling out. Today's Courier Mail reports that the state government needs in the order of 14 billion dollars to "save southeast Queensland from rail chaos". The article goes on to say

The study findings are expected to be released later this year and details are still sketchy. However, options being considered include "doubling of existing capacity by building two dual-track tunnels connected to the existing network by 2026, with other upgrades to the surface network to support freight".

It's a sum of money that's so mind-boggling big it's hard to comprehend. In scope though, the project is not that different from Melbourne's underground rail loop of the 1970s. If you think about it, two deep level tunnels under Brisbane River with a number of city stations wouldn't come cheap.

Can the work be avoided? I doubt it can. Certainly at the moment there are some 21 trains coming off the Gold Coast, Beenleigh and Cleveland lines across the two-track Merivale Bridge then around a sharp curve and through a short tunnel to a flat junction with the lines from the Ipswich line. Factor in a built-over Central Station (with no real room to grow except downwards), suburban rail extensions (Springfield, Coolangatta, Maroochydore, Redcliffe - maybe) and there's a heck of a lotta trains to handle.

I hope more details on the study are released shortly. It's so frustrating not being able to discuss things properly.

Time for a proper Sunshine Coast public transport connection

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:07:00 +0000

My new boss and a number of my key clients are located up the Sunshine Coast, so I am finding myself up there about once a months for various meetings and workshops that can't be done remotely.

It's a really tedious trip to make, averaging about 1.5 -2 hours by car. This means a typical 90 minute meeting pretty much wipes out a day, once you take into account travel and preparation time.

Unfortunately, the Sunshine Coast is not currently linked to Brisbane by any serious public transport. There are long term plans for a suburban rail extension from Beerwah to Maroochydore (the so-called CAMCOS line) but this is at least 15 years away, if not further. In the meantime, the closest rail link is the North Coast line which passes through the Sunshine Hinterland to Nambour.

TransLink provides a bus service connecting with trains at Landsborough that is the main PT link to the Sunshine Coast. Unfortunately both the train and bus are really not good for business-type trips from Brisbane to the coast. It takes 2 to 3 hours do do the trip and there are also a grand total of 4 services that arrive on the Coast before midday.

It's about time to do something serious about this.

Not only does CAMCOS have to be brought forward (instead of being pushed back as is constantly rumoured) but some decent interim solutions need to be found

more contra-peak Nambour trains need to be run (if the network can cope - it's a single track line)
all trains at Landsborough need to be met by a direct bus to Mooloolaba and Maroochydore (not deviating through Chancellor Park back streets, although I guess the University is acceptable)
in fill express buses need to be provided from Caboolture direct to the Coast at times when the Nambour rail line is at capacity

I can't be the only one who would rather not have to drive.

Time for a PT solution for the middle suburbs

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:51:00 +0000

Just about all the proposals I have seen for enhancing Brisbane's PT network fall into 2 categories

(1) expand into new outer suburban areas (and if necessary enhance CBD capacity to cope)
(2) put something clever (e.g. light rail) up the inner city corridor between West End and the Valley.

I would like to put in a plea for those missing people. People like me who live in the middle suburbs, who are not far enough out to benefit from the suburban rail and busway networks as they currently stand, and are not high profile inner city 'renewal' areas. Instead we have to put up with congested roads complete with buses stuck in congestion.

This past Monday as my ''express" bus edged down in the inside lane of Musgrave Road in Red Hill I counted no fewer than 7 local buses stationary in traffic in the outside lane. Many of these buses had standing passengers.

These people are trying public transport but I fear that as road improvements (such as Hale Street Bridge and the Western Link) come on line, will switch back to car.

I'd like to make a special plea for this corridor. I believe that something has to be done to provide a dedicated public transport facilities for the Waterworks Road corridor. What I would love to see is a light-rail based solution. It would be expensive and would involve tunnelling, but I think it is needed. I rather fancy something like the SF "Muni" solution: light rail that runs in a tunnel in the city centre and where needed plus median running on the street where there is room.

Imagine it, something whizzing past and under traffic from Ashgrove Village, under Red Hill, down and around Latrobe Terrace Paddington and onto the City, the Valley, Newstead, maybe under the river to Bulimba. The possibilities are endless.

It's not going to happen. The planners won't buy it because we don't deserve PT because we don't live in high density housing units, and the engineers are too busy building road tunnels - supported by politicians who should know better.

Oh well...

Getting people out of their car: a new rule of thumb

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Around Australia, each state Department of Transport or equivalent conducts regular household activity and travel surveys. These are massive affairs surveying thousands of households to understand their travel behaviour. In part the huge amounts of data are needed to calibrate the equally massive strategic transport models that (more or less) predict future travel demands.

Mostly, the data from these surveys is kept confidential which means it is not available to outsiders without special permission. An exception to this is the NSW Transport Data Centre which is brilliant in that lots of the data is released, so you can examine behaviour by local government area. (The outputs of the travel models are, of course, terribly commercially sensitive and almost never shared with anyone)

Not long ago I downloaded a batch of their Sydney data and whacked it into Excel to see what I could do with it.

One of the first things I did with it was to take the figure which showed the average mode share for car driver by LGA (1997-2001 average) and did a simple linear regression against the 1996 'transit access' figures that I had previously calculated for my thesis in 2005.

Transit Access (a percentage) is defined as the proportion of an area that is within 800m of a train station or 400m of a bus route that runs at least every 15 minutes during the day and at least every 30 minute at night and on Sundays. (I had previously developed this measure and found that it was about the minimum public transport level needed to generate a reduction in private vehicle VKT).

This time I was more interested in overall number of car trips, because this can be very important in understanding traffic impacts (and hence infrastructure requirements) of a urban development.

The result of this regression is shown below (my apologies if the graph is a bit blurry)

In short, it shows a 70% correlation between increase in 'full time' public transport coverage and decrease in car driving. I am so happy with this, I am now using it as a convenient 'rule of thumb':

Each 1 percentage point coverage in full time public transport generates a 0.25 percentage point drop in car driver use.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

SEQIPP 2008 - Exciting times ahead

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:05:00 +0000

The South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan and Program (SEQIPP) for 2008 was released yesterday (June 3).

For the past few months various rumours have been floating around suggesting that major transport projects would be pushed back or dropped altogether. It seemed the government wanted to dampen expectations with regards to major projects.

Well, it turns out the rumours were wrong.

I have had a quick look through the SEQIPP document, and in particular the summary tables of works. There is a lot of motorway work, but there is also an incredible amount of infrastructure work now scheduled and budgeted for PT. Most of these are new for 2008.

Rail

$872 million for Darra - Springfield Rail (delivery by 2019)
$1.4 billion for Ipswich to Springfield Rail (commencing 2012)
$1.3 billion for Gowrie to Granchester Rail (Toowoomba Range freight bypass I presume) (commencing 2019)
$550 million for Petrie to Redcliffe (commencing 2019)
$1.1 billion for Robina to Elanora (underway)
$650 million for Elanora to Coolangatta (commencing 2019)
$650 million for Caboolture to Landsborough duplication (underway)
$800 million for Landsborough to Nambour duplication (planning to start now)

and of course the biggie:

$7.3 billion for Inner City Rail Capacity (commencing now)

Bus

$310 million for Centenary Highway bus lanes Ipswich Motorway - Toowong (commencing now)
$2.5 billion for Northern Busway - RCH to Kedron - Bracken Ridge (underway and continues over 20 years)
$3.1 billion for Eastern Busway - Buranda to Capalaba (commencing now)
$365 million for SE Busway extension to Springwood (commencing 2011)

$420 million for a mysterious Brisbane Cross River Bus Access (commencing 2012)
$750 for an HOV network program (commencing now)

and then there is the strangely named

'Public Transport'

$1.7 billion for Gold Coast Rapid Transit (commencing now)
$3.1 billion for CAMCOS - Beerwah - Caloundra - Maroochydore (commencing 2012)
(CAMCOS is supposed to be a suburban rail extension, so I don't know what it is doing here with GCRT that will probably be LRT)

Exciting times ahead!

Busway blues

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:21:00 +0000

Brisbane's new Inner Northern Busway opened on May 19th. My bus route was one of those changed to use it.

The new cross-platform arrangement with trains at Roma Street is pretty neat (although the platform is the used once-a-day standard gauge platform).

Apart from that, I must say I am particularly underwhelmed by the changes.

Under the old system, my bus came down Countess Street, turned left at the lights onto Roma Street, stopped outside the station, continued along Roma Street, turned left at Turbot Street, right at Edward Street, stopping outside Central Station then left into Queen Street to a terminus outside the GPO.

Under the new route the bus runs down Countess Street, turns sharp left at Roma Street onto the busway on ramp (stop at lights) then up to the busway through route (stop at lights), turn right, stops at the Roma Street station, along the busway, into the left lane just short of King George Square station (stop at lights), turn right and out of busway onto Roma Street again, turn right (no signals) onto Roma Street slip road, left at Turbot Street and then as before to Central and the GPO.

Seeing as I get off at the Central Station stop, the whole deal has probably added 2-3 minutes to my trip in the morning.

There's no improvement in reliability either because the congested part of the bus route is Musgrave Road through Red Hill before you get to the city. Roma Street was never any problem.

Woo! Go BRT!

What is a metro - and does Brisbane need one?

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday I posted a set of pictures, and asked which ones were from a so-called 'metro' and which ones weren't.

This is what they were:

1. A high end 'light rail' system, the Tyne and Wear Metro
2. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the Berlin U-Bahn
3. Lightweight diesel railcars ('Pacers') from the West Yorkshire Metro
4. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the original Paris Metro
5. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the District Line of the London Underground
6. A high end 'light rail' system with city centre tunnel, the Docklands Light Railway (also in London)
7. A bus from the Adelaide metro (which also features some diesel railcars on a rather run-down railway network)

The Berlin and the two London examples aren't called 'metro'. All the others are. Looks can be deceiving!

(My offer of a half-mark was for recognising that the District Line began its life as the Metropolitan District Railway! I have also noticed that the Berlin U-Bahn web page refers to it in English as "metro". I don't recall hearing the term used in Berlin myself)

Obviously I picked this list for a point, and not just because they are all systems I have ridden on. The dictionary definition that is simply 'an underground railway like the one in Paris' isn't enough on its own: West Yorkshire and Adelaide don't have underground parts to their 'metro', and in London it's always 'the Underground' or more often 'the Tube', never 'the Metro'.

As a professional transport planner, I have had to deal with various demands for a 'metro' for Brisbane. When I sat down with a rail engineer we discovered that we had very different ideas about what defined a metro. He immediately thought big and bulky like the London Underground; I thought fast and flexible like DLR or Tyne and Wear. It was just what we were used to. What we agreed on, though, were:

It's a railway
It serves a city
It offers a frequent service
It is high capacity and probably has lots of standing room on board
It has closely spaced stations for maximum coverage
It is preferably designed with lots of doors for fast loading and unloading
It serves in part a distribution function (not just a home-work commute function)
It is a marketing term

We agreed that it would probably be underground for at least part of its route because this was the only way it would serve the inner city area. We also agreed that the Brisbane Citytrain system already shows many characteristics of a metro, and with improved vehicle design (for faster loading and unloading) and more frequent services (especially in the off peak) it probably ought to be called one.

What we also agreed upon was that Brisbane doesn't need a totally new independent underground rail line or loop of the London Underground or Paris Metro type: it simply doesn't have the population numbers or city size and shape to make it worth while. Certainly, any attempt to curtail Citytrain's operations at the city fringes and make people transfer to a metro for their final destination ('like London') is a very bad idea - and bad history to boot.

As the inner areas of Australia's capital cities increase in population through densification and urban renewal, there will be a need for improved public transport. Except for Melbourne (where the trams still have much potential) this is going to mean new dedicated facilities. I personally feel that there is much benefit in exploring the 'lightweight' metro of the Tyne and Wear or DLR model as a complement to the existing suburban railways, rather than trying to copy London or Paris.

Which of these is not a metro?

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:20:00 +0000

Metro appears to be the transport buzz word of the moment:

Brisbane Courier Mail:
Designer advises Brisbane to go underground for metro rail

Sydney Morning Herald:
Bye heavy rail, now for a north-west metro

The "Eddington Report" from Melbourne:
melbourne metro -‘new generation’ rail tunnel (warning PDF)

But what is a metro anyway?

The dictionary defines it as

metro

• noun (pl. metros) an underground railway system in a city, especially Paris.

So, quickly now, which of the following is doesn't have "metro" anywhere in its name? (I'll accept two or three in the answer)

1.

2. (please excuse gratuitous picture of me)

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Answers next time - and with it some rational discussion on why it matters.

(for images 1, 4, and 6 I am indebted to Wikimedia Commons, and in particular photographers Chris McKenna and "Pline")

Quality control

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:36:00 +0000

From a conversation at work today:

Me: So you are saying it is better to be consistent than right?
Boss: Yes

Says a lot, really.

Rain

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:49:00 +0000

So far, 2008 has been wet.

Really really wet.

Rain nearly every day this month.

Brisbane's dams are now over 30% of capacity (up from something like 15% this time last year)

There are gullies across my back yard where the water running under the fence from my neighbour has pushed aside the gravel. The whole lower back yard is a damp mess. The vegies, especially the tomatoes have given up the ghost with the swampy ground.

Amazingly there was just a little bit of sun yesterday and this afternoon, so for the first time in 3 weeks I get to mow the lawn, which is inches high. Of course, I run out of petrol half way through.

Bet it rains tomorrow again!

On projects and confidentially

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:17:00 +0000

OK, I'm bad. No post for 10 weeks.

The thing is, I have been really busy at work on all sorts of potentially very interesting projects. Unfortunately, none of the work is in the public domain and I'm not really allowed to talk about it. One of the projects would lead to a potentially multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects so I can understand why Queensland Transport wouldn't want any information to get out, apart from what it lets out itself.

At least I am going to get a report out on Monday for the other project which has been keeping me insane for months.

I can't wait for the reports to become public so I can make comment.

Sigh.

Gratuitous holiday shot

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:35:00 +0000

(Ribblehead Viaduct for those who were wondering)

Fight Ignorance

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:35:00 +0000

I guess Saturday's post needs a little explanation.

On Friday I went on a trip on business up to the Sunshine Coast. I was appalled at the number of "One Nation" and Pauline Hanson posters (it is election time). ON's slogan appears to be "We're not PC. We tell it like it is" and Hanson's is "Protecting the Australian way of life".

Sadly too many people believe them, and can't and won't see that other people have other viewpoints that just might not be inferior to their own narrow 1950s view of the world.

I wanted to say something that rejected their point of view, without giving them and potential legitimacy through mentioning them by name.

Hence the slogan.

Thought of the day

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:23:00 +0000

Word text annoyance

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:25:00 +0000

I write lots of statistics papers.

My everyday word processor is, like millions of other people, Microsoft Word. The 2003 version in my case.

There is one thing that really annoys me. There is no simple way to generate an 'over bar' text decoration, without having to go the whole Insert-Object-Microsoft Equation 3.0 route. Which is really frustrating because this decoration is

(a) about the only symbol you can't easily reproduce using normal text in Word, and
(b) about the most common statistical symbol (sample mean).

There's got to be a better way: perhaps a specialist font I can install?

Brisbane Inner City Rail Capacity Study

noreply@blogger.com (HDZ) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:54:00 +0000

According to a story in today's Brisbane Sunday Mail, there is a 'bold new government plan' to develop new a new underground railway for Brisbane:

BRISBANE could have two under-the-river rail tunnels and a new rail bridge in a bold State Government public transport plan.

There could be major new train stations at Woolloongabba, Gardens Point and the "financial district" at Eagle St, and a redeveloped Exhibition line for year-round use.

Transport and Main Roads Minister Paul Lucas will today unveil details of a $5 million feasibility study to develop options for connecting the rail network north and south of the Brisbane River.

I don't think I will be breaking any rules of confidentiality if I mention that this project is one of the reasons I haven't been able to post anything in the last month :-p