User:EamonM25/Brisbane Transport

Transport for Brisbane (TfB) is a business unit of Brisbane City Council, operating bus services under the TransLink integrated public transport scheme in Brisbane.

History
The origins of Brisbane Transport can be traced to August 1885 where the Metropolitan Tramways & Investment Company established a service in Brisbane under franchise from the Queensland Government with 18 horse trams. The tram system remained in private hands until January 1923 when the Queensland government established the Brisbane Tramways Trust, compulsorily acquiring the tram network and supporting infrastructure, then in 1925 creating the Brisbane City Council and transferring responsibility for the tram network to the council. Before the council withdrew support in 1961, the council supported the tram network by expanding it to a peak of 175 km with over 400 trams.

Bus services commenced in 1925 by the Brisbane City Council. Brisbane City Council shut down bus services due to financial loss in November 1927. Bus services recommenced 13 years later, in July 1940 with 12 Albion Valkyries. In 1948 the Brisbane City Council acquired 20 operators with 67 buses.

The first Rocket services began on the morning of 18 April 1977 between Garden City and the Brisbane CBD. These services were based on the idea that bus travel time could be reduced to less than the travel time by car by the removal of most embarkation stops.

In the 1990s, Brisbane City Council corporatised its transport services to form Brisbane Transport, a council-owned commercial businesses managed at arm's length from the council and providing consultancy services back to it.

Infrastructure
Brisbane Transport operates services along dedicated busway infrastructure to avoid peak hour traffic congestion on roads closest to the Brisbane CBD.

Bus upgrade zone
Bus upgrade zones (BUZ) are high-frequency bus routes mostly running direct to the Cultural Centre. All BUZ services run at least every fifteen minutes from around 06:00 to 23:00 seven days a week and at least every ten minutes during peak hours from Monday to Friday.

CityGlider
CityGlider is a high frequency pre-paid bus service around the Brisbane CBD, operating every five minutes during peak and every 10 to 15 minutes during off-peak. This is the first service in Brisbane to operate 24 hours on Friday and Saturday and 18 hours every other day. Bus stops serviced by the CityGlider are identified with signs and painted kerb.

Clem7
Clem7 (Route 77) is a bus route using the Clem Jones Tunnel (Clem7) which links the suburbs of Eight Mile Plains and Chermside, the route runs every 15 minutes at peak times and 30 minutes at off-peak, Monday to Friday.

The route commenced on 22 March 2010 at a cost of $1.6 million per annum. The route has decreased the journey time between Eight Mile Plains and Chermside, removing the need to transfer buses at Cultural Centre. The route completes the 30 km cross-city journey in 39 minutes instead of up to 55 minutes via the Brisbane CBD.

Fleet
As at February 2018, the fleet consisted of 1,240 buses.

Two-axle buses
Almost a third of the total fleet are MAN 18.310s, delivered from 2005 to 2010, mostly with CNG engines. The rest of the regular rigid fleet consists of diesel-powered Volvo B7RLEs (delivered from 2009 on), and smaller numbers of older CNG-powered Scania L94UBs (2000–2005), all low-floor, accessible and air-conditioned.

Three-axle buses
BT operates two models of three-axle "tag" buses, the Scania K310UB (2008) and the Volvo B12BLE, both diesel-powered and delivered from 2008 on. These larger buses are used on high-demand trunk routes, mostly on the South East Busway.

Articulated buses
Articulated buses currently used by Brisbane Transport are the CNG-powered MAN NG313s, delivered from 2007 to 2008 and the diesel-powered Volvo B8RLEAs, delivered from 2018 on.

Historic
Until the mid-1970s, heavy-duty AEC and Leyland buses were purchased. Later purchases were from European suppliers, Volvo B59s being purchased from 1976, MAN SL200s in 1982 and Volvo B10Ms from 1987.

Special Liveries
Mainly during the past 20 years, there have been many special liveries put onto Brisbane Buses with the first one being wrapped in late 2000 and the most recent one done 4 months ago (April 2020).

XXX out of 500th new buses for Brisbane In 2009, Brisbane City Council started making an initiative where 500 new buses would be delivered to Brisbane Transport over the next few years. On the back of the new buses, they had a decal put on them saying, "No. XXX out of 500 new buses for Brisbane." During this period two buses had special liveries applied. The first was G5043 in 2011 as it became the 400th bus out of 500 and they had a special scheme that looked like the one that G1463 received when it came to the 1000th bus for Brisbane. The second livery was on G1952 and that was to mark 500 out of 500 buses and it has a unique livery with the fronts of buses put on the side windows all in blue and then 500 made out of yellow buses and on the back it says "No. 500 of 500 new buses for Brisbane." Ever since then only two buses kept the back lettering (1952, 5120) and unfortunately G5043 lost its livery in October 2018 when it was replaced with the 'INAS Global Games 2019' livery.

90 Years of Brisbane Buses In 2016, Brisbane marked 90 Years of transporting the people of Brisbane on buses and to celebrate this achievement, in September 2016, two new liveries were shown off at Brisbane City Hall with Former Lord Mayor Graham Quirk (retired March 2019) and new Mayor (announced 2019) Adrian Schrinner being there to celebrate. The two liveries were a 1960 Panther Style Chassis livery and the second being a City Xpress livery from the 1980s. Quirk said it was important as it, "reminds bus users about just how much our Brisbane buses have changed over the decades.” There were four buses wrapped in liveries with there being two in each livery. The City Xpress livery is on buses W1520 & V2255 and the Panther-inspired livery is on G1334 and C1858.

NAIDOC Week On July 6th, Brisbane City Council revealed four new liveries for four Volvo B8RLE's and the four liveries are named as Distinguish, Two Worlds, Connections and Dreaming. When they were first wrapped these were distributed with 2817 and 2818 (Distinguish & Two Worlds) were at Virginia while 2848 and 2849 (Connections & Dreaming) were at Toowong. In October 2019, they started the relocation of B8RLE's at Virginia Depot to move to Toowong Bus Depot to replace some MAN 18.310's that were either retired or moved to Garden City to replace the retired Scania L94UB's.

All Buses Since 2000 with Special Liveries

Depots
Brisbane Transport operates its services from seven depots for specified areas. Some of these depots service routes shared in overlapping areas with other depots. Generally, each of Brisbane Transport's buses is allocated to a particular depot, displays a letter prefix for that depot before its fleet number, and hence is assigned to specific routes.