Brisbane traffic: the worst times to drive, and how to avoid them

What are Brisbane's peak hours?

For Council's own traffic reporting, the morning peak is 7am to 9am and the evening peak 4pm to 7pm, on weekdays.^[1] The same windows show up on the street: Council's example clearway sign bans stopping between 7am–9am and 4pm–7pm, Monday to Friday, to keep lanes moving.^[6]

School zones add their own slow patches inside and around those hours, with most running 7–9am and 2–4pm on school days.^[2] So a weekday afternoon drive past schools can be slow from mid-afternoon, before the evening peak has even begun. On the motorways, ramp signals that meter traffic onto the road switch on when there's congestion or flow problems, usually in peak hours.^[5]

Is the morning or the afternoon worse?

On Council's roads, usually the morning. Council publishes, for each of 18 key corridors it manages, the median travel time and speed in each peak, month by month.^[1] We averaged the 18 corridors' speeds for each month of 2026 that was published when we checked (January to September):^[1]

Two patterns stand out. From February onwards the morning peak was slower than the evening peak every month, by up to about 4 km/h. And the gap between the quickest and slowest months is larger than the gap between morning and evening: a February morning averaged more than a fifth slower than a January one.

The averages hide a wide spread. In September 2026 the slowest corridor's evening peak averaged 17.6 km/h and the quickest corridor's 49.2 km/h, so a route on an arterial with many signals can be much slower than these figures.^[1] Council's figures cover its own roads, not state-controlled motorways.

To turn speeds into time: at the February morning average of about 24 km/h, 10 km of these roads takes around 25 minutes; at January's 31 km/h, about 19 minutes. On a daily commute of that length, the season alone can add more than ten minutes a day, before any crash or roadworks. That's worth knowing if you're judging a new job's commute in the January holidays.

Why are school terms slower?

The slowest mornings in the 2026 data fell in months fully inside school term: February, March and May. The quickest were January, which is mostly summer holidays, and December 2025 before it (31.2 km/h in the morning peak).^[1][3] April, July and September, each with school holidays in them, sat in between.^[1]

If you're starting a new job or moving house and have any choice of week, the school holidays give the easiest first impression of a commute. Plan the real thing on a term-time weekday, though, since that's what you'll be driving most of the year.

How do you plan a drive around the peaks?

• Shift the start time. The peak windows are fixed points: leaving before 7am or after 9am, or heading home before 4pm or after 7pm, moves you out of the busiest measured hours.
• Check live conditions before you go. QLDTraffic shows incidents, roadworks and special events, often listed well before work starts, and its destination travel times update every minute.^[5]
• Allow for the school run. On school days, add time for any route past schools in the morning and mid-afternoon.
• Watch for events. Concerts, games and festivals bring their own closures and parking limits; see Suncorp Stadium and the Gabba and Riverfire.
• Consider not driving into the city at all. Leave the car at a station car park and take the train or bus in: park and ride in Brisbane.

Transit lanes are another peak-hour tool: with a passenger on board you may be able to use a T2 lane during its hours. The rules are in T2, T3 and bus lanes in Brisbane, and peak-hour roundabouts are covered in roundabout rules in Queensland.

Picking up or returning a car at peak times

Rentzy's yard is at 238 Nudgee Road, Hendra. If you're booking a pickup or return, give yourself room either side of the peaks, and book a time inside our opening hours that suits the traffic you'll actually drive in. Our Hendra location page has the hours and directions, and Brisbane CBD to Hendra covers the trip out from the city.