Tag: Infrastructure Australia

Guardian Australia understands the federal government will allocate roughly $300m in funding for the Brisbane metro bus project in the upcoming budget. On Monday, federal Labor promised $2.2bn for cross-river rail, a project the Queensland government is already committed to financing without federal help. But IA now instead ranks the metro project among its top priorities nationally and says “the benefits of [cross-river rail], as set out in the business case, are significantly overstated, and the costs of the project as currently presented are likely to exceed its benefits”. Brisbane is also a bus city. Unable to get federal funding, the Queensland government announced in 2017 it would fund the cross-river rail project itself. The opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, points to the business case that listed capital costs as $5.4bn, with another $9bn required in operational and auxiliary costs. Last week, Brisbane MP Trevor Evans was polling voters on the metro, with a preamble that reinforced that the bus project was among infrastructure Australia’s top-six priorities. “Infrastructure Australia has listed Brisbane Metro as being in the nation’s top six high-priority projects and my view is that it should be funded accordingly.” Evans says the metro should not be seen an alternative to cross-river rail. “Both projects will be critical to Brisbane’s future because there are emerging bottlenecks for both the train network and the bus network,” he says. “The business case for the cross-river rail is not yet as advanced or ready.”