Tunnelling through the CBD for the $1.2 billion Brisbane Metro mass transit service will close one entrance to King George Square station for up to two years.

Adelaide Street will also be subjected to two years of upgrades and improvements as Brisbane City Council's flagship transit project moves further into the CBD.

At Tuesday's transport committee meeting, councillors were given an update on the project's progress.

The 200-metre, 3 to 6-metre-deep Adelaide Street tunnel will link up to King George Square bus station and form a key centrepiece of the Metro.

Construction on the tunnel portal is well underway at North Quay, with piling halfway done and tunnelling set to begin mid this year.

To complete the link between the tunnel and King George Square, Brisbane Move Consortium will need to close the entrance to the square's underground station closest to City Hall at Adelaide Street.

The two other entrances to the station, one at Ann Street and the other at Adelaide Street, will remain open throughout construction.

Pedestrians will be detoured up and around the site past City Hall, and bus stops will stay in service throughout construction.

Pilot progress

Acting transport committee chair Angela Owen said it was welcome to see progress on the Brisbane Metro project which the council launched in 2016 as a major solution to the city's growing congestion issues.

"The team is working extraordinarily hard on this project and it's great to see all the pieces of the jigsaw coming together," Ms Owen said.

"I noticed that this morning the pilot vehicle is making its way through the Jersey Channel … which is great to see."

The electric pilot vehicle has been manufactured in Switzerland by contractor HESS which won the tender to develop 60 vehicles for the Metro.

Opposition leader Jared Cassidy asked if the Metro was designed to cope with more than one version of the electric bus once the 60 vehicles reach end-of-life, or if local competitors provided electric buses as well.

Council program director for major projects Stephen Hammer said the high-capacity, high-frequency vehicles had been selected to match the existing busway infrastructure Metro will operate on.

"We're not the only operator on the busway … and we do have a mixed fleet of both our own vehicles and also private vehicles utilising the busway," Mr Hammer told the councillors.

In 2019, the council announced a plan to turn Adelaide Street into a walkable boulevard and gateway to the city, replacing its busy lanes of traffic with a safer environment for pedestrians and active travellers.

The Metro is scheduled to start services in 2023, but work will continue on infrastructure until 2024.

SOURCE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-16/brisbane-metro-tunnelling-moves-into-cbd/100831892