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Journey on BERT: How a metro in name only risks embarrassing Brisbane on the world stage
More than a few ears pricked up when, almost eight years ago, then-lord mayor Graham Quirk announced his re-election promise of a “Brisbane Metro”.
Visions of Paris, Moscow and myriad cities around the world, with their high-frequency underground railway systems that are the envy of anything Brisbane has to offer, immediately sprang to mind.
The first concept images, released in 2016, sure looked like a metro. As long as you squinted.
But then, scratching just below the service, the nomenclature of Quirk’s keystone election promise started to look flimsy.
The metro wouldn’t run on tracks, it would run along busways. It wouldn’t have train wheels, it would have rubber tyres.
It wouldn’t be a train, it would be a bus. A bloody big bus, but a bus nonetheless. (Just don’t call it that.)
The Brisbane Metro has never been a metro and Brisbane City Council’s insistence on calling it that risks embarrassment on a global scale when we invite the world over for a party in 2032.
Because the world knows what a metro is, and it knows what a metro isn’t. What Brisbane will have, come 2032, just ... isn’t.
Before going any further, and for the avoidance of all doubt, the Brisbane Metro itself is a very worthwhile project.
When complete, it will be a welcome addition to Brisbane’s public transport network and have the capacity to revolutionise how we get around in our fair city.
It will be great. But it just won’t be a metro.
RAIL Back on Track’s Robert Dow, one of Brisbane’s leading public transport boffins, has come up with a pretty good alternative name: Busway Electric Rapid Transit – the BERT. (Though I prefer Brisbane Electric Rapid Transit, with the same acronym.)
Dow says he took that idea to Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and his public transport chair, Ryan Murphy.
“They thought that was a bit silly, until I pointed out to them that San Francisco’s rapid transit system is named BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] and a few of the PR guys around town, they actually thought the BERT was quite good, because it describes what it actually is and it’s a catchy name,” he says.
A BERTie in the wild.Credit: Matt Dennien
“You can call the electric biarticulated buses BERTies – it would have really gone well, I reckon. It would have caught on and stopped all this lampooning that’s going on about ‘the metro that’s not a metro’ – it’s constant.”
Calling it Brisbane Metro, Dow says, is talking down what it really is – a world-leading bus rapid transit system.
“That could have really gained some credibility, or renown if you like, as one of the world’s best-practice bus rapid transit systems.
“But no, they went along and called it the Brisbane Metro, which is just dumb.”
Not everyone shares those concerns.
Daniel Gschwind knows a thing or two about tourism. After years as CEO at the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, he’s a professor of practice at Griffith University’s Institute for Tourism.
It’s in that latter capacity that Gschwind tells me I am full of it. Politely, of course.
“What matters is to have a transport system that is easy to understand and accessible, as in: Where does it go? Where do I catch it? And the metro, in inverted commas, will deliver that on a dedicated piece of infrastructure, which is the crucial thing,” he says.
“In Europe, the trams, the buses, the trains, it does blur a little bit. I’ve just come back from Europe, as a matter of fact, and sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell what you’re actually dealing with.
“... The lines have blurred in terms of transport systems and I think what really matters is people will be impressed having these two lines criss-crossing the city in an efficient way.”
Another of the hats Gschwind wears is that of honorary consul of his native Switzerland in Brisbane. In that capacity, Gschwind visited the Swiss factory making the BERTies – ahem, sorry, metro vehicles – while he was on that aforementioned European trip.
“I’ve just had the opportunity to see those buses as they were being constructed and they are really the latest technology,” he says.
“They have incredibly fast recharging systems – at either end of the line, they’re charged in five minutes before they’re fully charged to go again.
“It’s the absolutely latest technology and the manufacturers said they were very impressed with Brisbane City Council during the tender process, opening the opportunities to fully electrified vehicles as opposed to hybrids.”
Cue record scratch. Wait, what was that you called them, Daniel? “Buses”?
Checkmate. It’s not a metro.
Now, ultimately, the most important thing is that these vehicles get people where they need to go.
But there is only upside to having a transport system that does what it says on the packet, especially when we’re inviting a planet’s worth of seasoned metro users to our fine city.
Save the “metro” moniker for the Brisbane Subway, should a future government ever have the foresight to build the thing, and bring on the BERT.
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