Page 215 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 6 March 2007
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have little flexibility, neither consumers nor service providers are able to change their appointments to suit the changes in the bus timetables. The decrease in services during off-peak times from half hourly to one hourly means that many are left to wait for up to 55 minutes to catch a bus. In Canberra’s summer, this meant waiting in the hot sun, often without even a bench to sit on. In the coming winter, it will mean sitting out in the chilling wind, with the risk of catching a cold or the flu. We are talking about elderly people here.
Our office has also been notified that buses are no longer servicing certain stops. One elderly constituent, in particular, who has cancer, must now walk for up to 15 minutes to reach her closest bus stop. This woman has had to give up her daily outing to the regional shopping centre. Another constituent used to catch the bus to the cemetery once a week to tend her family’s graves. It seems that this is virtually impossible for her now.
For those elderly constituents who rely on the buses to do their shopping, take out their grandchildren and attend appointments, the decrease in bus services destroys their quality of life as their ability to leave their home is diminished. This makes them more vulnerable to social isolation. It also leads to less scope for exercise and the ability to shop for a variety of food. The result is a decline in health and more difficulty in staying in their own home. This leads to a greater burden on our health system. In the long run, we will be paying for these cuts, although they may, perhaps, have delivered the short-term financial gain that the government wanted.
The matter of school children has already been talked about a little in question time. We know that the cuts to bus services have had an impact on school children. Some have been crammed on buses to a perhaps unsafe level. We know that there are many parents who are now driving their children to school because the bus service is not adequate any more. This is adding to our peak hour traffic; it is also reducing our children’s health and making a nonsense of the walking school bus.
We also know that children whose schools have closed and were promised adequate bus services often cannot get onto them or they are not convenient. Again, parents have to fill in the gap. Not all parents are able to do this. Not every family has a car and not every family has a car that is available for a parent to drive children to school—often several children to different schools.
It seems that anybody who relied on public transport for services beyond peak hour services is disadvantaged. These are the people who need public transport the most. Many commuters are also disadvantaged even though they were the ones who are meant to benefit from the changes. We have heard comments that the buses are too full and that routes have been lengthened as several routes have been collapsed into one.
The people most affected are those who catch two buses from the city or from their home to other town centres. There is a ridiculous lack of coordination between bus routes. Their bus arrives three minutes after the bus they should have caught has already left. Then they have to wait another half hour, and sometimes an hour.
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