Metro name busted
Change it now! Also: Election exposes Aunty's “woeful” Brisbane broadcast facilities. And: change is afoot at InQueensland.
Update: Changes at InQueensland. See below.
“Brisbane Metro is a bus?” That’s the title on the tile of popular transport and travel vlogger Rory Ding’s YouTube video reviewing the new transport system.
Yes, the world is incredulous that the River City is using a word reserved elsewhere to describe rail systems (such as the Paris Metro, Sydney Metro, London Underground and New York Subway) for its big new bendy-bus network.
As I and others have said for many years, it’s not a metro it’s a BRT — a bus rapid transport system, similar to those in Bangkok, Cape Town, Nairobi, and across China, Japan, India and Indonesia.
The internet knows what Brisbane City Council has long failed to admit. In fact, the council’s Metro website was the third result I got when I Binged* “BRT” just now. (The first is the Bracken Ridge Tavern, the second is a fire brigade supplies company called Big Red Truck.)
But there is potential good news on this front, with BCC transport chair Ryan Murphy (not the American writer-director-producer of the same name) acknowledging that the term “Metro” could be confusing.
“We’re having a good look at the name at the moment … But ultimately, we’re not obsessed with the name,” he told the Brisbane Times.
Let’s just change it now. BERT (with the E recognising the fact that the vehicles are electric) is a more accurate, more appealing and more memorable name.
*Edge is my default browser, and it uses Bing rather than Google.
WTF, ABC?
It’s state election week and the big guns from ABC Television have rolled into town.
By which I mean, the need to pump out national, or larger-scale programming from Brisbane means Aunty has had to use outside broadcast trucks to supplement its technical capacity.
Apparently, the ABC’s South Bank studios — which, incidentally, are built on land Queenslanders were promised would always be public park — can only handle a simple nightly news bulletin.
Any television production bigger than that is beyond the abilities of the facilities in Australia’s third-largest and fastest-growing city.
As one insider says, “the ABC building is woefully ill-equipped to produce live TV”.
Not good enough!
ON THE MOVE
Mister Brisbane will be Mister Somewhere Else for the next few weeks. I’m flying out on election day, October 26, heading south and then west to travel north into East and South East Asia. If all goes to plan, that will be documented on my social media sites and, first with short clips and then longer videos on my Radio Bert YouTube site (which, as I write, is tantalisingly close to having 1,000 subscribers). If I can, I will also post here. If not, I promise I’ll make it up to you.
UPDATE
As is often the case, some news that caught my eye and falls into the Mister Brisbane remit broke not longer after I pressed send on this email. According to an unsigned (an indication of further change?) email, InQueensland is changing its name to InDaily Queensland. The message doesn’t say it, but this brings the name into line with its South Australian sister publication, InDaily. I wonder if content sharing is on the table?
The email does say:
“InDaily Queensland will continue to showcase the finest news and insights from InQueensland, while now seamlessly incorporating content from our sister sites – The Weekend Edition, your go-to lifestyle and city guide, and InReview, dedicated to arts and culture reviews.”