Major shake-up to southeast bus services Brisbane is set to get more BUZ and CityGlider bus routes. Photo: Michelle Smith The number of high frequency bus routes in Brisbane - the city's BUZ and City Glider routes - will be increased from 19 to 26 as part of a major review of southeast Queensland's bus services. The change is one of the three main recommendations of a nine-month review of southeast Queensland's bus services announced in July 2012. Before the recommended changes, those 19 bus routes carried 44 per cent of all southeast Queensland's bus passengers despite making up only eight per cent of the total number of services. Now these 26 services - including the extra seven high frequency routes - will be branded under a new name Go Network and the changes will be progressively phased in over the next 18 months. That means Mt Ommaney, Grange, Salisbury, Albany Creek, Riverhills, Morningside and Yeronga will have a BUZ route for the first time. The second major recommendation of the bus service review is that more peak hour bus services will go into regional shopping centres - Indooroopilly, Carindale, Mt Gravatt and Mt Ommaney - rather than continuing directly into the CBD. From these centres, passengers will have the choice of more frequent bus services - and train services - into the CBD while the regional bus services will circulate on new routes in the suburban areas. Transport Minister Scott Emerson launched the review of bus routes at the Cultural Centre bus station at lunch time. As Fairfax Media reported in November and December 2011, almost 50 per cent of buses that travel over the bridge from the Myer Centre busway to the Cultural Centre are empty. The review aims to reduce the number of empty buses across the Victoria Bridge. Mr Emerson said the review found there was a widespread problem with buses with few passengers running on routes throughout southeast Queensland. "In fact what we found when we did this review was that 52 per cent of our bus services carried seven or fewer passengers," Mr Emerson said. There will be a reduction in bus services - down from 446 to 330, according to Mr Emerson. However Mr Emerson said the bus services would be redirected to the routes that carry most passengers, the new Go Connect bus routes. "If you are part of the Go Connect network (26 bus routes), what that means is that buses will be turning up at high frequency between 7am and 7pm, seven days a week," Mr Emerson said. The third major change is simplification of the bus routes. Six "Super Stops," which will group bus services to particular suburbs, will be set up in the Brisbane CBD. These six "super stops" will be the King George Square Bus Station, the Queen Street Bus Station, two on Adelaide Street (one eastbound and one westbound), one on George Street and another on Ann Street. The King George Square super stop will accommodate buses to Ashgrove, Chermside, Bracken Ridge and The Gap. The Queen Street stop will manage southbound buses to Browns Plains and Logan, Mount Gravatt and Sunnybank. Adelaide Street (eastbound) will accommodate Hamilton, New Farm, and Toombul bus services. Adelaide Street (westbound) will manage Cannon Hill, Carindale, Redlands and West End bus services. George Street will manage bus services to Bardon and Mount Coot-tha, while the Ann Street super stop will accommodate bus routes to Kenmore, Mt Ommaney and the University of Queensland. In addition, Queensland Transport will create a new Gold Coast bus network to link with the Gold Coast light rail network. Find out if your bus route is affected More to come ...