The design looks mostly very good. I would suggest it could and should be done regardless of whether the proposed tunnel is built, and the idea in this article that it would be predicated on the tunnel going ahead is a relative lack of vision.
The design they've come up with disappointingly doesn't include separated bike paths, but only on-road ones. They are protected by car parking though, which is pretty good and would make conversion into separated cycleways pretty easy.
Yeah I find myself most often going via Kelvin Grove Rd and then Webster. Gympie from Stafford Rd to Murphy Rd is just the worst. The part from Webster to Beams is almost as bad but unavailable for where I'm usually going.
The thing that would solve Gympie Road congestion is a train line that goes along Gympie Road and goes from Carseldine to South Bank, if this could be done with a tunnel, I think it would work out great. I loathe driving on Gympie Rd because of how much traffic it carries. Also, no "Road" should be the centre of a city, cities should be made of streets that create more wealth by slowing speeds.
If Brisbane's old tram network was still operational, it would be the third-largest today. That's without any further investment compared to where it was at in the 1960s.
We had a train line—or at least a tram line—running right down the Gympie/Lutwyche/Bowen Bridge Rds corridor into the CBD and across to South Bank. We could definitely have that again. Or alternatively (or even better, in addition to that), light rail running east-west connecting from the Northwest Transport Corridor (which would be built out as a heavy rail line) to the existing Caboolture/Nambour Line, via Gympie Rd.
But yeah, the existing Gympie Stroad is just awful for the city. It's an incredibly inhospitable place if you're outside of a car, and it's not exactly a nice place to drive either.
Yes, it is easily one of my least favourite parts of Brisbane. The new bus lanes are good but so long as the buses only operate on limited timetables, they won't be good enough to reduce the traffic load. I agree about the east-west connection, there is currently no way other than car and maybe a few bus lines to move in that direction on the Northside, the first connection for the Northern lines is Bowen Hills station which might as well be a downtown
