Students and staff who normally use our Citycat and Cityferry services to access UQ St Lucia may have to consider alternate travel options following the flooding in Brisbane last week.
Media reports indicate that whilst nearly half of our Citycat terminals suffered only minor damage and could be fixed relatively quickly, remaining terminals had either significant damage or written off. Those terminals most affected include Sydney St, Regatta, Holman Street, Queensland University of Technology, North Quay, West End and St Lucia/University of Queensland.
It was reported recently Lord Mayor Campbell Newman believes it would take more than a year to rebuild some ferry terminals. So we will probably have disruptions to river based public transport for some time to come.
The Eleanor Schonell Bridge in Dutton Park, built for the exclusive use of pedestrians and buses, remains operational. It provides convenient transport across the Brisbane river to and from the St Lucia campus of UQ, making Dutton Park a great option for those looking to rent or buy close to the University of Queensland.
Brisbane City Council buses operate from the Chancellor’s Place bus stop near the J. D. Story Building, St Lucia and the UQ Lakes bus station via the Eleanor Schonell Bridge. Timetables are available from all Student Centres or by phoning TransLink on 131230 or from their website: http://www.translink.com.au
If you’re like us you’re having a hard time accessing info that’s accurate and useful. It’s raining hard outside and snippets from the media say the next two days may be worse than 1974’s floods. Hopefully this is an extreme prediction.
Flood mapping info: Brisbane City Council released info on what Brisbane homes MIGHT be flood effected after the big downpour of May 2009. The pages today have been near-impossible to load so if you can’t open the one for your suburb try this handy alternative flood info, a site that’s mirrored the BCC content and is much quicker to download.
The government’s road closure info is worthwhile if you’re trying to get around.
Early afternoon prediction from the Lord Mayor is that 6,500 of Brisbane’s 400,000 properties may be effected in some way.
It was a landmark night for Brisbane with the long-awaited Clem 7 tunnel opening to traffic around 11.30pm last night. One of our team was on the spot to be one of the first through and he captured this video.
And no, this isn’t normal driving speed, the trip takes over 4 minutes but we’ve sped things up a little – it is just a tunnel!
Lord Mayor Campbell Newman is wearing a big smile today and he deserves praise. His election promise in 2004 was to get serious about inner Brisbane traffic and his “Transapex” masterplan is about diverting cars around our CBD. The 4.8km Clem 7 tunnel is the first step and in skipping 24 sets of traffic lights its impact on our inner city will be significant.
Watch next for the opening in June of Hale Street Link, now called the Go Between Bridge. It’s about time Brisbane had these sort of solutions.
Last night, the Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman spoke to Business South Bank members at West End’s Greek Club. Have a listen to his very positive view point on the future of Brisbane and its expected population growth rates. He briefly addresses urban sprawl and the planning process currently underway for developing West End including an update on the City Glider, Hale Street (Go Between) Bridge and future City Cat stops.
I snapped Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman at Business South Bank’s monthly meeting last night at the Greek Club in Edmondstone Street, South Brisbane. There’s certainly plenty of positive things happening around the Kurilpa pocket and I enjoyed listening to the Lord Mayor’s take on the exciting plans for South Brisbane’s future.
The mammoth Cathedral Place apartments in Fortitude Valley have one of the more unusual boundary fences you’ll ever see. And newcomers to Brisbane might not have heard the fascinating story of the missing cathedral.
Brisbane’s Catholic Archbishop in 1928 was an entrepreneurial chap named Sir James Duhig. Sort of an early 1900’s Campbell Newman, devising huge projects and rallying everyone around him to make them happen.
Duhig wanted to build a new Cathedral to replace St Stephens in Charlotte Street and the pic below shows what he had drawn up – it would then have been the largest Christian church in the southern hemisphere. A one hectare (2.5 acre) site was chosen and a lengthy fundraising campaign began.
Work progressed as funds came in but despite completing the perimeter walls and a small crypt the project lost momentum. Rumour persisted that local funds raised were sent to the Vatican where the Pope refused to return them. In truth the project just flopped, Duhig died in 1965 and in 1985 the site was finally sold to developers.
Cathedral Place was finally completed by Devine Ltd in 1999, 514 apartments with a huge central beach and tropical pool. Not a real cathedral but probably used by more people today than it might have been had history taken a different turn.
The rain that fell over Brisbane on Wednesday May 20th was an extraordinary event, with a third of our average annual rainfall coming in 24 hours. Reports say up to 15% of properties were effected in some way by the drenching that inundated much of the inner city.
And Brisbane City Council’s moved pretty quickly to provide new flood info, allocating $600,000 in its upcoming budget to show water run-off patterns on it maps. BCC already map river and creek flooding info and the Lord Mayor says the change will add overland flow data.
“For the first time ever, people will be able to see how groundwater will affect their homes and their lives, without them having to experience a flood,” he said.
As a home buyer access to the extra info will be very handy. We would suggest some caution be used though as the Council’s method of collecting the info is not 100%. Why? They don’t have staff or cameras in every street and even if aerial photos could be used they don’t capture much at 3am! They’re no dummies though and with use of contour data and the like, their maps will be an improvement.
We’ve always recommended buyers WALK around the neighbourhood of any home they’re keen on, chatting to long-term neighbours and looking for clues on all the things that effect a home, not just floodwaters.
If there’s a pandanus in the garden and flood debris wrapped around the back steps we’d be asking more questions, regardless of what the maps say!
Great news today for carparking in the city with BCC starting a new trial that might replace parking meters. Installed by a Kiwi company the system allows you to punch payment and rego details into a central box then wander off. Council’s officers then check digitally to see if you’ve overstayed.
Lord Mayor ‘Can Do’ Newman says it could save Council big bucks and make parking easier. “You don’t have to go and get a piece of paper, don’t have to place that in your vehicle, the machine keeps track of how long you’ve been there,” he said.
And here’s the bit we love the sound of. The machines might even be able to send you a text to warn you when your 20 cents (or $14) is almost up. We’re really going to miss all that white chalk on the tyres!
Students and staff who normally use our Citycat and Cityferry services to access UQ St Lucia may have to consider alternate travel options following the flooding in Brisbane last week.
