Page 5691 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
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has been met. As a consequence of that, I have no doubt that, as we go through the current planning and the current assessment of our sustainable transport network and plans, one of the areas in which we will set ourselves a far more ambitious target, because we have been so successful with that initially set, is in relation to people choosing to walk or cycle to work.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Le Couteur, a supplementary question?
MS LE COUTEUR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Given that renowned urban planner Jan Gehl last week labelled the 100-metre-wide major road being planned for Molonglo as unnecessary “unless you want to build the Champs Elysees”, will you reconsider the size of the road?
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Ms Le Couteur. This is a significant issue. It is an issue that is engaging the government in some consideration of the implications. To be fair, ACTPLA is still developing the initial concept—
Mr Barr: And a cycleway.
MR STANHOPE: Yes. It is still developing the concept plans for Molonglo. We are almost at the point now where we will be proceeding. Ms Le Couteur, it does need to be understood that the entire corridor incorporates planning for a roadway, a transit way and cycleway. It is a major road. John Gorton Drive will be the major connection between Weston Creek and Belconnen, incorporating the whole of Molonglo. I believe that the tenders for construction of the first stage of John Gorton Drive are currently under consideration. You do have a point, Ms Le Couteur, in relation to the staging of the construction of infrastructure within the corridor. The initial plan or contract goes to the construction of John Gorton Drive.
Ms Le Couteur, I think this is an issue that you have raised previously and I am happy to engage with you on it. But to put the issue in context, and having regard to the width of the corridor, you need to understand that it involves, I believe, four lanes of road, a transit way or a dedicated busway, a bicycle path and a footpath. In that context, we probably need to have a conversation about development along the corridor, which I think is the more pertinent issue for discussion. The issue around the sequencing of development within Wright and Coombs in the context of a desire—(Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: Ms Bresnan, a supplementary question?
MS BRESNAN: Minister, why do you still give approximately 40 times more funding to road and infrastructure projects than cycling and walking projects when a quarter of ACT greenhouse gas emissions comes from transport?
MR STANHOPE: I think we would all wish that we had, in the context of the structure and the nature of our city, a sustainable network. I am sure we all wish that more Canberrans caught the bus. I am sure we wish that there was less reliance on the motor car in the ACT than there is. But, in the context of the structure of our city, the nature of the way it has been designed, the essential maintenance of the Y plan and, indeed, its expansion, and some of the other issues that we are all very fundamentally
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