Whatever Happened to Hobart’s Underground Bus Mall?

Media release – Pedestrian & Public Transport Users Group, 27 March 2021

No Shelter from the Storm. Whatever Happened to Hobart’s Underground Bus Mall?

On 1 February, 2018, the Tasmanian Liberals released their vision for a state of the art underground coach and bus terminal for the 2018 election for Hobart’s Elizabeth St Mall.

The then Infrastructure Minister, Rene Hidding stated the underground bus station would take two years to construct and be operational within the term of the next government should the Tasmanian Liberals be re-elected.

The Tasmanian Government offered this as their main congestion busting initiative for Hobart (in their transport policy), amongst a range of other measures like this one, most of which are unimplemented and have hardly moved an inch since 2018.

The Tasmanian Government have never released their consultants report on the proposed underground bus mall. They said they would do this by June 2019.

“The Tasmanian Government shows complete disregard for public transport users in this state; they couldn’t even be bothered releasing the report during the life of the present government. Remember their commitment was to build and have operational the underground bus mall during the term of the present government. The proposal doesn’t even exist as a publicly available document. We call on the Tasmanian Government to immediately release the consultant’s report,” stated Christian Bell, a spokesperson for the group.