Felicity Caldwell

Felicity Caldwell reports on how transport systems, city infrastructure and public sector decisions shape daily life and household costs, with a strong focus on public transport, council budgets and the way policy plays out on the street. She covers state-level politics and government as a reporter for Brisbane Times, spending much of her time on parliamentary rounds, transport policy and related portfolios. She has worked as a journalist since 2008 and joined Brisbane Times in 2016, bringing experience across city hall, federal politics, courts, entertainment, education, youth, transport and employment issues.

Public transport, active travel and everyday access

Caldwell’s core reporting stream follows how people get around the city, particularly by bus, train and emerging forms of micromobility. She writes about suburbs that function as “bus stop black holes”, using route maps and service gaps to show where networks fail residents and what changes are proposed to fix them. Her coverage of bus shelters and specific stops, including a long-running fight to replace a removed shelter on a busy city street, tracks how small pieces of infrastructure affect safety, comfort and access for individual commuters over months and years.

She regularly focuses on rail issues and first-and-last-mile problems, including research on how shared e-scooters and e-bikes can connect commuters to stations and reduce reliance on private cars. Her stories on a “ghostly” train station near the CBD, on Queensland Rail training hundreds of new drivers to avoid another “epic rail fail”, and on teenagers building online followings around public transport all use specific sites and characters to illustrate how networks function in practice.

She also reports on fatal crashes and safety concerns around electric bikes, combining police and regulatory detail with the circumstances of individual incidents.

Alongside traditional public transport, Caldwell follows the rapid evolution of micromobility rules, describing impending changes to e-bike regulations, proposed bans on higher-speed models and new restrictions that could force riders to travel “barely above walking pace”. She returns to these topics as rules move from draft to implementation, giving space to councils, motoring organisations, rider groups and government officials to explain their positions.

Her anchor reporting on kerbside car parking sits in this stream, examining how free on-street spaces intersect with demand for more sustainable transport and the limits of road space in dense suburbs.

City council budgets, infrastructure and urban trade-offs

Caldwell closely follows Brisbane City Council budgets and infrastructure programs, focusing on rates, levies and capital projects and how they redistribute costs across residents. Her reporting on the council budget details rate rises calculated to the weekly household impact, and lays out the “winners and losers” across services, suburbs and spending categories in clear budget-language. She has examined measures such as a $50 levy for “free” green bins, describing concerns that such charges function as a “tax-avoidance scheme” and setting out how the policy works and who bears the cost.

Transport infrastructure is a recurring lens in this work, particularly the Brisbane Metro project and associated tunnel and busway changes. Caldwell reports on detours and disruptions for city buses during Metro construction, linking tunnel test schedules to weekend travel and explaining how more than 150 bus routes will be overhauled. In explainer pieces on the Metro rollout, she sets out when services will start, how routes shift above ground, and what commuters need to know to navigate new stops and naming debates around the project.

Her council coverage extends to road rules and street design, such as articles on dangerous slip lanes and little-known traffic rules that have prompted guidelines discouraging the creation of new slip lanes. She reports on protests and court disputes over Story Bridge path closures, and follows arguments about toll changes and their impact on bridge users and council responsibilities.

Across these stories, Caldwell ties infrastructure decisions to everyday trade-offs: how long trips take, how safe crossings are and how budgets balance against service expectations.

Government, public service and workplace practice

Caldwell also reports on the machinery of government and the working lives of public servants, treating workplace arrangements as a policy and service-delivery issue rather than a lifestyle topic. She has examined which public servants take the most work-from-home days and which roles allow staff to avoid office attendance altogether, setting out how remote work patterns persist after the pandemic and what that means for productivity and oversight. Her coverage of government jobs where most people can work from home profiles specific roles and agencies, using figures and internal data to show how widely work-from-home is embedded.

In pieces on diversity targets and disclosure, Caldwell explores why the government is falling short of its own goals and the reasons public servants might hesitate to share information about themselves, drawing on advocates’ and officials’ explanations. She also covers policy proposals and controversies such as youth crime plans that emphasise “adult time for adult crime”, giving space to expert criticism of how such approaches could worsen outcomes. These stories sit alongside her reporting on government-linked laboratories facing scrutiny over inaccurate forensic tests, reinforcing a consistent interest in accountability and trust in public institutions.

Formats, tone and reporting approach

Caldwell works across formats, from rolling “as it happened” updates on daily news to data-led explainers and deeply reported features. She uses live update pieces to track fast-moving local stories, while longer articles take a single issue - such as Metro network changes or e-bike regulations - and break it down into practical guidance, timelines and stakeholder views.

Her feature writing leans on vivid case studies, whether a lone commuter at a “ghost” station, teenagers who love public transport, or a resident campaigning for a bus shelter, to give policy and infrastructure debates concrete stakes.

Her background across multiple rounds, including city hall, courts, entertainment, education, youth, transport and employment, informs a style that moves easily between political process and human impact.

She spends much of her time in parliament or chasing politicians, and has covered state election campaigns from the road, multiple state budgets and estimates hearings, which gives her reporting a strong grasp of how decisions are made and scrutinised. Throughout her work, Caldwell returns to the same thread: how government and council choices about transport, infrastructure and workplace rules translate into the costs, options and daily experiences of the people subject to them.