Page 4185 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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the great challenges in Canberra is that the distances between people’s residences and where they work or otherwise have to commute to can be considerable due to the dispersed nature of our city, and this often makes choices such as cycling—which is, of course, a very healthy choice for people—not feasible.
One way that we are seeking to tackle this is through the development of bike and ride facilities where, for those who can choose to cycle but who are perhaps not confident to cycle the long distances between, say, Tuggeranong and the city, or, indeed, even from Woden to the city, are able to still use public transport and still cycle.
To this end, the government has invested just over $700,000 over the next three years to improve our bike and ride network across Canberra. The bike and ride network has been supported with funding of just over $200,000 from the federal government, and this will allow for the installation of secure bicycle parking cages with capacity for 25 bikes and 31 parking rails at 13 high volume bus stops across the ACT, mostly on the Red and Blue Rapid high frequency bus routes.
At present there is one bike cage located at the Belconnen community bus station and the other is located on Flemington Road at the Nullarbor Avenue intersection in Gungahlin. Two additional cages will shortly open. One is currently nearing completion on Melrose Drive near the Phillip pool in Lyons and the other is currently under construction at the very successful Mawson park and ride near the Southlands shopping centre in Mawson.
These facilities are all about giving commuters choice. They are all about encouraging people to recognise that it is possible to ride your bike the short journey—say, the less than five-kilometre journey—from your home to these high frequency bus routes, park your bike securely and then be able to catch the high frequency bus services into a town centre or into Civic.
Of course, for those opposite who are worried about cost of living pressures, you would think they would actually support an initiative like this, an initiative that encourages people to keep the car at home, that gives them a real choice, that helps them improve their physical fitness and that allows them to take advantage of better and easier access to high frequency public transport services. But of course, no, all we hear is derision from those opposite, because they are not really interested and they are not seriously committed to investing in better transport choices for Canberrans. They do not really care about investing in public transport. They are quite happy to mouth the slogans but they are not able to deliver the policies that will make a difference.
In contrast, this government is delivering better transport infrastructure for Canberrans, infrastructure that will support more cycling, infrastructure that will support easier access to high frequency bus services, infrastructure that helps reduce congestion on our roads, because the more people who ride their bikes, the more people who walk, the more people who catch public transport, the fewer people who drive their cars on our roads.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves, a supplementary question.
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