Page 3166 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 2013
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I find it amazing that this great system, which uses GPS, cannot calculate the average distance of a passenger’s journey. I would think that information would be very useful for ACTION in their planning of future networks. When I put to them that surely a query could be put into the database that would extract that information, they said it could not be done. That is disappointing given that it was promised before implementation of the system that it could be done. This is just the latest revelation in the saga of the MyWay ticketing system, which cost around $7 million and came in years late. I find it very hard to believe that, if all the buses have GPS devices, if all the bus stops have GPS coordinates in the database, they cannot run a query to calculate what the average journey distance would be.
It is interesting that the minister would say that that kind of data would not be useful. I think it would be fascinating to know whether, in fact, people are using ACTION buses for long journeys or whether they are just using ACTION buses for short journeys and whether there is a disproportionate weighting towards longer or shorter journeys. That would, in part, give ACTION some understanding of what parts of the network are popular and what parts could be improved upon.
Something I would like the government to expand upon is the role of ACTION buses with the implementation of capital metro. This work should start to be done very soon because the modelling for capital metro will largely depend on the feeder services which ACTION are able to deliver into the various hubs which are supposedly going to be built along the way at Dickson, EPIC and Gungahlin. Are we going to see a new interchange built at Gungahlin? Or are we going to continue with the four-interchange model?
Something else the government should articulate is the future of the 200 bus which goes down Flemington and Northbourne avenues and then on to Defence, Wentworth Avenue and through to Fyshwick. That is one of the best buses in the network in that it is very well patronised. However, I imagine that that bus will go by the wayside when capital metro comes into play. That could well mean that somebody who works at Defence and wants to get public transport from Gungahlin, rather than being able to get a bus from Gungahlin through to Defence as they do now, may have to go on a feeder bus to Gungahlin, hop on a tram to the city and then hop on another bus to go down Constitution Avenue. (Second speaking period taken.) That is yet another question with regard to capital metro the government is yet to answer.
The other key issue the government is yet to answer is the impact on employment at ACTION. The ACT government has long accused the Liberal Party of being a threat to employment at ACTION. However, what will be the impact on ACTION as a result of the government’s decision to spend $614 million building a tram from Gungahlin to the city? Some projections I have seen—I think, from the 2004 KBR study—suggested that employment at ACTION would go down as a result of a light rail system in the ACT. It will be interesting to see whether the minister is able to shed any light on the issue of employment at ACTION.
I will conclude my remarks there. There are, of course, so many areas of TAMS we could discuss and so many issues the government need to confront, many of which
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