West End Footbridges

More info has also been released about the proposed West End-St Lucia bridge.

BCC has released three possible alignment options for each bridge and invited public input. You can check out the details via these links:

West End-Toowong footbridge

West End-St Lucia footbridge

These bridges represent the two biggest infrastructure projects for West End in at least 10 years, so it’s important we get them right, and thoroughly consider all impacted stakeholders and flow-on impacts.

I’m extremely concerned that Brisbane City Council has only allowed two months for public consultation regarding the location options, and that this is occurring over the summer holidays.

The LNP’s process is that following this consultation, they want to make an initial decision about the preferred landing points first, and then undertake a detailed business case analysis for each bridge.

My position at the moment is that I’m quite supportive of a West End-Toowong footbridge, however I remain a tad dubious that the business case for the West End-St Lucia bridge will stack up.

I’ve already provided the advice to the LNP and Labor that I think a Citycat terminal for the western side of West End is a higher priority than a footbridge from West End to St Lucia, but these are completely separate areas of council decision-making and budgeting, so saying ‘no’ to the West End-St Lucia bridge (or to the West End-Toowong bridge for that matter) doesn’t necessarily increase the chances of getting a second ferry stop.

I think it is worthwhile to engage with council’s consultation process on the proposed bridge locations, however before residents rush to provide feedback, I think we need to be demanding more time and more information from BCC so that we as a community can hear from all stakeholders and make an informed decision.

My main concerns at this stage include:

- BCC has provided some estimates as to how much daily usage each bridge location would have, but hasn’t offered any detail about how those estimates were arrived at, so we need more information about how the projected trip numbers were counted

- BCC has acknowledged that for some landing points, some private properties would need to be publicly acquired, but hasn’t stated clearly whether these are residential homes or vacant blocks of land, or exactly how many properties might need to be acquired

- BCC hasn’t provided details about where new parkland might be created to offset potential impacts to riverside public green space

- BCC hasn’t provided enough detail about exactly which trees (including species, age, location) might need to be removed for each proposed bridge location

- BCC hasn’t provided much info about what investment would occur in connection points to the bridges. For example, the value of the Ryan St landing option for the St Lucia bridge depends a lot on what pedestrian and cycling improvements will be made to Ryan St, Doris St and Lower Hardgrave Rd. Adding better bike lanes, improved pedestrian crossings etc will make a significant impact to how many people use these footbridges, so we as residents need more info about what upgrades might happen to connect to each bridge location in order to evaluate which landing points are the best option

So overall, I think we need more detail from council, and we also need more time. Although the ‘consultation’ period is two months (which is better than some council consultation processes), it’s over the summer holidays when a lot of people might be less likely to engage with it.