Expo '88 Architect Bemoans Loss Of South Bank Monorail

Sun Herald

Sunday May 4, 2008

By Tony Moore of www.brisbanetimes.com.au

THE removal of the two-kilometre monorail system that ran around the Expo '88 site on Brisbane's South Bank is one of Sir Llew Edwards's few regrets, 20 years after the event.

Sir Llew, the architect of Expo '88, said the monorail should have stayed on the site. It could have been incorporated into Brisbane's public transport system.

"I often felt that the monorail was one thing that in time they would regret moving," Sir Llew said.

"But the post-expo people elected to remove that from the site and I had no objection to that decision - but I would personally have liked to have seen the monorail remain," he said.

Sir Llew said the monorail had been one of several issues the government should have explored further after Expo '88.

However, many "doubters in the public service" would have made it difficult to argue the case for expanding the monorail from South Bank to the CBD.

The monorail had four nine-carriage trains that each carried about 100 people and ran around the site in about six minutes. It was purpose-built to give people a quick overview of the site. "There were so many doubters in the public service - in the community - about the possible success of expo during the four or five years that we were in the construction phase," Sir Llew said.

"People thought it was the dream Joh [then premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen] had - it won't work, so let's just sit and watch.

"So we felt that we didn't get the co-operation of the post-expo time from the government and the community."

In hindsight, more consideration should have been given to post-expo transformation of the site.

"The only regret I have in the planning phase was that we weren't encouraged, nor were we brave enough perhaps, to think deeply about what would happen afterwards," he said.

"Perhaps we could have avoided that four- or five-year period where South Bank - or what was the expo site - just lay there dormant."

Sir Llew said he thought "what is there now is just magnificent" but "we could have had that four or five years earlier".

20 years after expo:

Turn to pages 52-53

© 2008 Sun Herald

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