Car-free in Cairns

We spent Sunday mostly walking around Cairns, so apart from my usual travelogue, I thought I’d also talk about the transport options in the city.

We started off with a walk to the Botanic Gardens, north of the CBD. This is a reasonable walk, almost an hour, which we thought we’d tackle before it warmed up too much. (The weather in Cairns reached the high 20s almost every day of July. It was glorious.)

The Gardens are lovely, and mostly quite shady, so it was very pleasant despite the day warming up.

The proximity to the airport did mean the serenity was regularly broken by aircraft noise. But still, the Gardens are great, with plenty to see. Well worth a look if you’re in Cairns.

PT in Cairns

I’d assumed we’d catch a taxi back into the CBD, but the bus stop was nearby, and a bus was due soon.

Cairns is kind of long and thin, hugging the coast. The bus network stretches from Palm Cove about 24 km north to Gordonvale about 20 km south. Wikipedia says metropolitan Cairns is 254 sq km, with a population of 153,000.

Every bus route (as far as I can see) goes to the CBD, with all of them converging on Lake Street, where there’s a stop at the central city bus station, and then proceeding to another combined stop at Cairns Central shopping centre, adjacent the railway station, where most routes terminate.

Some routes run together along high frequency corridors, such as past the hospital, and between the CBD and James Cook University.

But most of the individual routes are not very frequent. There are some exceptions, but most routes seem to be only every 30-60 minutes, even on weekdays.

So we were lucky that there happened to be a route 131 bus from the Botanic Gardens to the City due in 8 minutes. The next bus was an hour later.

All the buses I saw were run by Kinetic, well-known in Melbourne for Skybus and many suburban routes. But while Kinetic is the operator, the routes are managed by Translink, the government body that co-ordinates public transport in various parts of Queensland, including Brisbane.

There seemed to be a handful of electric buses being used, but otherwise all diesel, and most of the fleet has no middle/rear door. Some buses had the dread all-over-advertising blocking the windows, some didn’t.

Drivers sell paper tickets on-board. The fare zones are quite small – there are no less than 5 zones covering the 24 km between the northernmost suburb of Palm Cove and Cairns CBD.

All fares paid on the buses are cash. Go Card and credit card payments haven’t reached Cairns yet.

For us it was $2.40 each for a two zone fare, which included two hours of travel if we needed to connect to another route.

In contrast, short trip (two hour) fares in Zone 1 in Melbourne are $5.30, with trips in outer Melbourne or regional towns typically priced between $2.80 and $3.30 per zone (with bigger zones). Of course in Melbourne and many towns you can only travel with a pre-purchased pre-loaded Myki card, making this type of spontaneous travel by tourists very difficult.

Even with cash fare sales on board, the bus didn’t take too long to reach the City, though it might be an issue on busier routes or at busier times with more people boarding. I wonder if there’s a plan to roll out something more modern?

The City bus station is basically two large adjacent stops (one northbound, one southbound), with plenty of shelter and seats, real-time screens and information.

The bus station is a little out of the way, in a half-block with not a lot of other stuff going on, but still within a few minutes walk of the waterfront, the pedestrian mall, most of the hotels and shops and so on.

Real-time information is available on the Translink web site, which is mobile-friendly, so you don’t have to install the app if you don’t want to, and also seems to be in Google Maps and other apps.

So the bus worked well for us, but only by chance.

From tomorrow (Monday 5th August), all local bus fares will be 50 cents, part of the Queensland Government’s election bribe err I mean cost-of-living initiative. We’ll see what difference it makes. In a location like Cairns with mostly infrequent routes, perhaps not much.

Trains in Cairns

The station is on the western side of the CBD, adjacent to Cairns Central shopping centre.

There’s just two routes serving Cairns: the tourist Kuranda railway, and the Spirit Of Queensland, which runs five times per week from Brisbane, taking just over 24 hours.

Apart from trains, Greyhound buses run south towards Townsville, Rockhampton and Brisbane 2-3 times per day.

(It’s interesting that Greyhound has a far more extensive network in Queensland than in Victoria or New South Wales, which have better state railway networks.)

Walking

Central Cairns is a grid, easy to navigate, and we did plenty of walking during our stay there.

The footpaths are wide, and there’s plenty of shade/shelter in the CBD, so walking around is easy… until you need to cross a street.

Most of the CBD streets are also wide, and the traffic lights are programmed for long cycles, even when there’s no traffic around. There is no automatic green man for pedestrians, and only a very short green time – then a long wait for the next one. Most lights have countdown timers (though I spotted some that were installed but not working).

So with long delays built into the traffic lights for pedestrians, and mostly light traffic, the obvious thing happens: most walkers ignore them.

This is a totally expected outcome given how they’ve been set up.

That said, the pedestrian mall in parts of Shields Street and the traffic calming along Esplanade and Lake Streets seem to work quite well.

The weather in winter was mostly fine for walking, though it did get a bit hot and sweaty in the middle of the day. I can only wonder what it’s like in summer and/or the wet season.

I didn’t see enough of suburban Cairns to get a feel for walkability, but from a quick look on Google Streetview and Walkscore, it seems like provision of footpaths in some areas is patchy and local shops and other amenity may be lacking.

Cycling and scooters might be an option. I saw some people doing both. Beam hire scooters have been around since 2022.

But overall, with greater Cairns being quite spread out, and mostly low bus frequencies, it’s not hard to see why most people in Cairns drive – especially given traffic congestion didn’t seem to ever be an issue, at least while we were there.

A relaxing afternoon

Back to the travelogue. After hopping off the bus from the Gardens, we had lunch then hit the Cairns Art Gallery, which was very good.

A break at the hotel for an afternoon cuppa, then we went for a walk around the waterfront. It was dusk, and the sunset was spectacular.

The restaurants were busy… alas we’d made no booking, and nowhere seemed to have space for an hour or more.

We ended up back at the Vietnamese place we’d tried a few times. Cheap, cheerful, reliable.

We had one more full day in the warmth of FNQ before heading home.