LNP reveals preferred Bribie bridge plan – with finish still years off

The Crisafulli government has revealed its preferred design for a long-promised new bridge to Bribie Island, with Transport Minister Brent Mickelberg saying he expected the work to be complete before the 2032 Games.

A new four-lane bridge is slated to double capacity of the existing bottleneck, which is pitched to be retained as a dedicated active transport crossing for pedestrians and cyclists to and from the island north of Brisbane.

Announcing the proposal on Sunday, Premier David Crisafulli and Mickelberg said community consultation on the plans will be open until the end of November, with geotechnical investigations to start this week.

“The Bribie Island Bridge is a gateway to a beautiful part of the world, and we want people, whether they live here or they want to come and visit here, to be able to do so safely and do so accessibly,” Crisafulli told reporters on the island.

“And this is a game changer for the region. But, more importantly, it fulfils a promise we made that people here heard about for a long, long time. I believe when you say something, you do it, and we’re living that.”

The LNP’s Ariana Doolan won the Pumicestone seat encompassing the island at the 2024 election from one-term Labor MP Ali King, after Labor shifted from dismissing long-standing LNP calls for a new bridge.

In the months before the 2024 poll, then-premier Steven Miles said Labor would duplicate the bridge at an estimated cost of $700 million, before a business case had been finalised – which the LNP dubbed a “bribe”.

An April 2025 summary of the business case, since published by the transport department, named the now-announced design as one of two shortlisted options: the second would have kept the existing bridge for westbound lanes.

The estimated cost for the business case-recommended option was $756.56 million.

On Sunday, Mickelberg said the existing 800-metre bridge would have required “a considerable amount of remediation to get it up to the standard”.

“It’s obviously safe as it sits right now, but it was not built to deal with the volume of traffic, and hence why the community’s been dealing with congestion, and … the challenges in relation to that emergency response when there is an incident on or around the bridge,” he said.

Mickelberg added that the original plans for a new two-lane bridge with an active-travel portion “would have seen a comparable cost”, but that all of the new design “can be delivered within the existing funding envelope, which is funded in the budget”.

Geotechnical investigations and community consultation will now feed into detailed design work, with federal environmental approvals also required for the construction work across the ecologically significant Pumicestone Passage.

Mickelberg said the timeframe for such approvals was expected to be two-to-three years.

“But we expect that construction time frame to be between three and four years once we get all those environmental approvals in place and the detailed design is finished. We’re doing everything we can to expedite that delivery as much as possible,” he said.

“It’s my expectation this should be finished before the Olympics.”

Labor’s transport spokesperson Bart Mellish said it was his former government which released concept designs for the new bridge and committed funding, and criticised the LNP for not laying out a clear budget or timeline.

“The Premier and his Transport Minister as more focused on self-promotion than getting shovels in the ground,” Mellish said.

Matt Dennien is a reporter at Brisbane Times covering state politics, parliament and the public sector. He has previously worked for newspapers in Tasmania and Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. Contact him securely on Signal @mattdennien.15Connect via email.