Page 2385 - Week 08 - Thursday, 5 August 2021

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Parking—Civic

MRS KIKKERT: My question is to the Minister for Transport and City Services. Minister, TCCS recently announced the imminent closure of two major parking areas in Civic—one on the corner of London Circuit and Constitution Avenue, and another on Marcus Clarke Street. We are told that these will be lost for several years, further exacerbating the chaos you will soon impose on people who work in or need access to Civic. Minister, how many parking spaces will be lost to Canberrans who are dependent on these for their livelihoods?

MR STEEL: I thank the member for her question. I will take the exact detail on notice but what I can say is that as we undertake this major infrastructure build, which is so important for the future of our city, there will be some disruption in relation to parking as we set up site compounds ahead of the construction starting—firstly with the utilities works, the early works, and then later with all of the other builds. There will be further site compounds needed in the future on various parts of the route down to Woden, as well.

The site compounds that you have particularly focused on are in Marcus Clarke Street and in the south-west corner of the carpark on London Circuit. The one in the south-west corner is only part of the broader surface carpark. Over recent years we have seen a significant number of carparks come on line in Civic. That has resulted—together with other circumstances like people working from home—in there being quite a large number of carparks in Civic at this present time. So we think that the current number of carparks that we have in Civic, both public and private, can manage the demand for parking appropriately while we undertake this major work. But of course we will be continuing to monitor the effects on parking. These two site compounds are critical for us being able to get on and build this important project.

MRS KIKKERT: I have a supplementary question. Minister, given that parking in Civic is already full, where are you expecting people to park after these closures, and will you table the whole mesoscopic study you referred to earlier?

MR STEEL: I thank the member for her multiple questions. In relation to the parking issues, I reject the premise of the question. I have just said we expect that there is capacity for parking in Civic, regardless of what is taken in relation to the site compounds. So people can find other parking elsewhere. Maybe they will have to park in a slightly different location, for example. I have already just tabled the outcomes of the mesoscopic model that I mentioned.

MR PARTON: Minister, why will you not table the entire mesoscopic study referred to earlier in question time?

MR STEEL: I thank the member for his question. Of course, we will continue to undertake various different modelling throughout the process the disruption taskforce is engaged in looking at how we can best minimise the disruption as we build this incredibly important infrastructure project for our city to better connect Canberra’s south with the city centre and to deliver—


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