Page 3853 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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These are just some of the operational problems, but one of the key reasons why people in my electorate are not getting on the bus is the disastrous situation at the Belconnen bus interchange, or the Belconnen bus stations. I will read an extract from my adjournment speech of 25 June, over a couple of months ago:
The hopes of ACTION’s Belconnen’s commuters have been dashed with another basic service delivery failure of this government. Yet again, this government is running ACTION for its own convenience rather than that of the travelling public. The “temporary” arrangements that will be in place for around two years do not meet the service standards that commuters expect.
I then listed a few issues, such as the fact that there are shelters that really are not shelters. They just happen to be some structures that vaguely resemble shelters, because they do not actually protect anyone from the weather. There is the distance from Westfield to the bus stations via the red bridge, and there are the dirty bus stops that are not regularly cleaned. There are too few seats so you cannot actually wait for a bus in comfort, and waiting is something ACTION commuters have to do a lot of.
There is the difficulty with the timetable and the connections. There are issues with buses departing from the wrong bays and the difficulty in actually finding which bay to go to. There is a shortage of passenger assistance and signage, and one of the key issues is that there are bus services departing a significant distance away from key community facilities like the library, like the citizens centre, like the Belconnen community service centre and like the ACT government shopfront. If you are trying to make it easier for people to use these government services, why do you put a bus stop up a hill 500 metres away from these core government services? It all goes to show this government is all about ticking a box to say they did something rather than actually delivering a tangible service that people can actually use and actually want to use.
One of the key issues is about performance management, performance indicators and data. I understand that we are going to be seeing a new ticketing system next year. I put it on the record right now that I am sure it will be delayed. Every single infrastructure program this government delivers it delivers late, if it delivers it at all. So I am happy to put on the record now that I think it is highly likely that the bus ticketing system that will be brought in next year will be brought in later than expected and maybe not even next year. It is very important that we do get good data, and it is very important that we actually benchmark the ACTION bus service properly, because, as I said, it is a monopoly operation.
It is important that we do actually compare it to other operations around Australia so we can make sure we are getting the best service possible. However, the government refuses to release the benchmark information. It is probably embarrassed about how inefficient ACTION is running compared to other operators. In actual fact, we had one or two ministers during the estimates process admit that ACTION was probably the most heavily subsidised bus system in the country. Benchmarking exercises have previously been published, so I am a bit concerned as to why suddenly we are not publishing data when in the past we have been.
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