Page 2220 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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The crux of the motion is that the Majura parkway, as it is proposed, will not deliver the solutions that Canberrans need. The other parties are overlooking or wilfully ignoring this. It is easy and politically comfortable to just claim that the parkway is a panacea for all transport ills. But we in the Assembly have a critical obligation to assess these projects and to make decisions that will genuinely deliver the best outcomes for Canberra. My motion calls on the other parties to put the proposed freeway in its full context and to properly scrutinise the proposal and the government’s broader approach to transport planning.
The people of Gungahlin and Canberra’s north need solutions to their travel problems. But contemporary and modern sustainable transport planning tells us that building a new Majura freeway is not the solution to these problems.
The Majura freeway concept originates in a transport plan for Canberra conceived in the sixties and seventies. Dr Bourke actually said that it was something from the 1970s, which is interesting; he actually quoted that in his speech. That was the same era when planners openly aimed for a city dominated by car travel. The vision was for the private car as the principal mode for all trips. Today we know that this is an unsustainable strategy that has failed wherever it has been implemented.
Yet this debunked 40-year-old vision is the one the government are still pursuing, seemingly ignorant of the problems that it entrenches for the city and its commuters. Modern, sustainable and strategic transport planning shows us that what does work is the provision of a high-quality network of public transport. This creates a convenient, healthy, sustainable city, resilient to the challenges of the future.
The government has tried to paint the freeway as a solution for traffic congestion and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Evidence shows that these claims are not real or accurate. Building these new roads and freeways actually increases the amount of road travel and the amount of traffic. In doing so, the freeway creates an overall increase in emissions and pollution and it fails to reduce commuters’ travel times. This well-documented concept is called “induced traffic”. It was not covered in the government’s EIS.
The government’s Majura parkway website also falsely claims that the freeway will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Victorian government recently earned criticism from the Victorian Auditor-General for taking the same short-sighted approach. The induced traffic phenomenon is observable and documented in cities all over the world. Is this what we want for Canberra—a future where Gungahlin residents have no option other than to drive cars on big, congested roads?
On the other hand, improving public transport will reduce travel times. This, too, is documented all over the world. Vancouver, Canada, for example, demonstrated this over the last 15 years in being the only Canadian city that was able to lower the average time taken to travel to work. The city achieved this by implementing an explicit policy to improve public transport and to build no new major roads. The city has grown in both population and employment, but it has accommodated new trips by public transport and active transport. Canberra can do the same, as long as we make the right decisions.
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