Page 5447 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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(b) investigate options for allowing Federal Government agencies to utilise an ACT Government car pooling service; and
(6) to report to the Assembly on the above issues during the first sitting week of 2012.”.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (5.35): The government will not be supporting this motion or the amendments proposed by the Greens today. As the Assembly will appreciate, every effort is taken to manage and minimise the impact of roadworks on the Canberra community.
The Glenloch interchange roadworks associated with the recently completed Gungahlin Drive project had the potential to generate considerable traffic congestion and impact in the Canberra community, as members would appreciate. To manage these impacts a proposal was developed to detour traffic from Belconnen to the city via Coppins Crossing Road, Cotter Road and then on to Adelaide Avenue rather than requiring all this traffic to go through the Glenloch roadworks site.
In 2007 the existing bus lane on Adelaide Avenue was converted into a transit lane for vehicles with two or more occupants, to provide some additional capacity. This was always seen as an interim arrangement. The transit lane has provided some minor relief to traffic since it was introduced and typically carried about 200 legal vehicles during the morning peak. As members of this Assembly would know, the roadworks associated with the Gungahlin Drive extension are now fully opened to traffic and the transit lane has been removed with the bus lane only reinstated over the weekend of 12-13 November.
Mr Coe has argued that the transit lane should have remained in place as a means of encouraging people to car pool. I would like to go through the reasons why the transit lane was removed. First and foremost, the government made clear from the beginning that the use of the bus lane as a transit lane was only ever a temporary measure. That was announced when the measure was first put in place. The government is doing what it said it would do from the beginning.
Secondly, while the government supports car pooling and the government encourages more people to do so, it should not be at the expense of the safety of those who choose to use public transport as a means of travel. Car pooling should not compromise the safety of bus drivers who have a large responsibility for the safety of 70 to 90 people that typically can occupy a bus during the peak periods.
Since the transit lane was introduced on to Adelaide Avenue there have been 10 reported crashes in the transit lane. Over the five-year period there was a total of 113 reported crashes on Adelaide Avenue, so almost 10 per cent of all the crashes on Adelaide Avenue are occurring in the transit lane. There were also some crashes in the earlier period, when it was a bus-only lane, with traffic moving into the bus lane. These crash statistics mirror the concerns raised by bus drivers and their industrial representatives, the Transport Workers Union, to the government.
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