October 21, 2026 — 11:19am
Brisbane will investigate buying mini Metro vehicles to speed up services across the city as new data shows peak-hour speeds on major roads are slower than they were six years ago.
The vehicles would be smaller than the current Brisbane Metro, which the council said was designed for busways.
Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said they would not be diesel-only buses, and Brisbane City Council’s global market sounding process would investigate electric, hydrogen and hybrid options, as part of the Metro expansion business case development.
Companies that could be in the running were HESS from Switzerland and Irizar from Spain.
Schrinner said building new busways and tunnels through established suburbs could cost billions and take years to deliver, causing significant disruption.
“We know we can use our existing road corridors in smarter, more efficient ways to get more people on public transport,” he said.
A Metro can carry 150 people, or up to 170 in “event mode”, standard buses have a capacity of 79 people, and bendy buses can hold more than 110.
Public Transport chair Andrew Wines said there may be opportunities to expand the Metro into more suburbs in the future, but the council must plan for vehicles to be on the road.
Asked how the new vehicles could be called a Metro, when it seemed to be a bus, Wines said it was a “rail-like outcome without the pain of rail”.
“Once we get a superior vehicle, and we get the regularity of service, we can move thousands of people really quite comfortable and quite easily.
“These vehicles, whichever ones we choose, will be significantly better than an ordinary council bus.”
Wines said he was an optimistic person, and he was confident there would be a Metro expansion before the 2032 Olympics.
Labor opposition leader Jared Cassidy said Brisbane needed a public transport shake-up, not a new type of bus.
“Brisbane’s bus network is not working. We need more services connecting more people to more places,” he said.
The RACQ floated the idea of “Metro Glider” services – smaller, more agile electric buses modelled after the Metro – last year.
In October 2025, RACQ general manager advocacy Joshua Cooney said Metro Glider buses could act as suburban connectors, channelling passengers onto main, high-frequency routes, servicing key corridors leading into the city that larger Metros could not access.
A leaked document obtained by this masthead in May showed the proposed expansion of the Brisbane Metro, including 22 new stations and stops to the north, south, east and airport, was unlikely to be finished before the 2032 Olympic Games.
It suggested the council would instead partner with the state government to give buses priority on Old Cleveland Road and Gympie Road, with a staged rollout of future corridors from late 2032.
However, at the time, Schrinner argued without federal funding there would be no expansion of the Metro.
This week, Schrinner said for a mass rapid transit project, the vehicles would need priority over general traffic, either via a busway or a transit lane, and AI could also be used to give a Metro a green light.
He said the expansion to Springwood may be able to use existing Metro vehicles, while the eastern and Airport sections would be modelled to determine the demand, type of vehicle needed and depot options.
The $36 million expansion business case is due to be finished by August next year, and will look at how existing corridors could be used as well as future options, such as the proposed Gympie Road tunnel.
Exactly two years ago, the first Metro rolled out, almost nine years after then-lord mayor Graham Quirk announced his Metro plan.
Meanwhile, more than 70 per cent of south-east Queensland’s road sections were slower in 2025 during peak hour than in 2019, according to the RACQ’s annual travel speeds report.
On the Gateway Motorway between Nudgee and Pine River Bridge, motorists lost an average of 15.34 minutes each trip during the afternoon peak, the equivalent of more than 2.5 days a year extra spent in traffic.
On Gympie Road, drivers averaged 25.2km/h in the afternoon peak between Kedron and Beams Road at Carseldine, adding almost nine minutes to the trip.
The Centenary Motorway between Ipswich Motorway and Fig Tree Pocket Road averaged 32.8km/h during the morning commute, adding nearly eight minutes.
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Source: The Age · Felicity Caldwell
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