Page 2950 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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It was interesting to hear from Mr Gentleman about the transport for Canberra plan. He talked about the utopian vision that this government has for transport. I will go through some of the buzz words in a minute. If you believe everything that is coming out of the spin from this government and the sort of stuff that Mr Gentleman was talking about, the buzz words—it is clean, it is safe, it is going to be available for all, it is integrated, it is sustainable, it is transformative, active travel, multi-modal transport planning—it sounded wonderful. But the reality is very different. The reality experienced by Canberrans when they go out to catch a bus just about anywhere across Canberra is very different from the utopian vision that was presented by Mr Gentleman and, indeed, by Mr Rattenbury in answer to the dorothy dixer that he got.
I am not going to criticise all the elements of network 14. Like many changes, there are good and bad, but when it comes to priorities I think it would have been useful—as an aside—for the minister to have been here when it was rolled out. Certainly, there was the imagery of bus drivers with placards saying, “Contact the minister; don’t complain to me,” when so many people were obviously complaining about the changes. It would have been useful if the minister had been here to perhaps deliver on network 14 when it was put forward.
I have received numerous complaints about the bus service. I know there are many people who have school age children who are really disappointed that a number of important services have been cancelled. Of course, these are people that do not have many other options. It is not just the kid that is impacted; it is obviously their parents or whoever it is that now has to make sure they get to school.
Ultimately the question is: where are the people? Where are the people that should be, essentially, if they are so excited about the public transport system here, catching the buses? It is quite clear that people are voting with their feet or with their cars because they are not taking the bus; they are finding alternative modes of transport. When Mr Gentleman was asked about that in a supplementary by Mr Coe his answer was, “We’re encouraging them to walk.” That may be the case, but ultimately what we are seeing is that the public transport system in this town is not delivering on the promise being put forward by this government.
The government’s strategic solution to this is the biggest project in the history of the ACT by a country mile. This government tries to say, “Health is the same sized project.” That is nonsense. There have been lots of health projects—individual projects—within the program of health delivery over the last decade. It is like saying that light rail should encompass all the money that has been spent on buses. It is the ACT’s biggest project. What I would say is that this should not be a priority for public transport in Canberra.
The evidence is compelling. There have been numerous reviews done on this. Indeed, the government’s own study in 2012 compared bus rapid transit, which would cost $276 million, with a cost-benefit ratio of 1.98, with light rail at a cost of $614 million—we now know the full cost, or we think we know the full cost; I will go into some detail later—which only had a cost-benefit ratio of 1.02. So even by the
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