Page 2945 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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MR COE: Minister, what essential elements are excluded from the $783 million, given that essential elements such as park and ride facilities are not included?
MR CORBELL: All these factors will become clear when the business case is released. The government has outlined its position on these questions earlier this week. I have outlined repeatedly in question time this week the government’s position in relation to the release of the business case and the reasons for the timing around the release of the business case. I simply draw Mr Coe’s attention again to the answers I have given to him and his colleagues earlier this week.
ACTION bus service—network
MS BERRY: My question is to the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. Minister, can you advise the Assembly of the improvements that have been made to the ACTION bus network as a result of the implementation of network 14 on 1 September 2014, and how are these improvements delivering better bus services to the residents of Canberra?
MR RATTENBURY: The new network did commence on 1 September and it provides an extensive range of new services as well as endeavours to both make the services run more directly and have better connections at the interchanges. Overall, for a weekday run of the ACTION network there are 300 more services a day than there were across network 12. That is around a 10 per cent increase, and that means there are now around 3,400 individual bus services running a day across the city.
There is, of course, a greater alignment between weekday and weekend services. Certainly with weekend services, we have also seen a significant increase, with an 18 per cent increase in services on a Saturday and a 30 per cent increase in running services on a Sunday. Certainly in the past some of the significant feedback on the network has been that weekend services have been a weak point, and I am very pleased that there has been a substantial increase on the weekends as well as on the weekdays.
There is also a substantial increase in the number of services heading to the parliamentary triangle. This is for a couple of reasons. Obviously this is a significant employment area in the ACT but also, with the arrival of paid parking from 1 October, ACTION was keen to ensure that even though the parliamentary triangle was already the best-serviced part of the network in the ACT it will now, in fact, be even better serviced following the introduction of network 14. There will now be over a thousand services a day running through the parliamentary triangle, either directly to the triangle or along Commonwealth Avenue. I would encourage people who do not want to pay for parking when paid parking arrives in the triangle to have a look at ACTION and see if it suits their travel needs.
There are a number of other new services in the network, including a new direct service between Gungahlin and Belconnen, a morning peak service from Gungahlin to the city that has no stops, improved services between Erindale and Woden, increased Xpresso services between Weston Creek and the city, improved services to
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