Page 2948 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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In response to community concerns, the government has committed to the construction of an additional light rail stop on Flemington Road in Mitchell. Construction is expected to commence in this financial year. The newly constructed stop will support local businesses and residents of Gungahlin and north Canberra, providing improved access to public transport in Mitchell. In addition to the construction of the light rail stop, pedestrians and cyclists will find it easier to access the Mitchell business precinct, with gaps in the Flemington Road path network to be addressed. That was funded through the budget. Other residents will benefit from the park-and-ride facility at EPIC, which will reopen shortly, after being used as a work compound during the construction of light rail. This will provide an additional facility for the community, providing another option for customers to use public transport instead of driving to the city.
To respond to the growing demand for light rail, as I have mentioned, we will be asking Transport Canberra to work with Canberra Metro to deliver additional light rail services for the community on light rail stage 1. I thank Mr Pettersson for his advocacy. We have an agreement with Canberra Metro around the operation of light rail. We will investigate the options for additional services to be added to the timetable, both in the morning and in the afternoon peak periods, to address the current demand that we are seeing.
This is a very good problem to have, but it is a problem, and we are very happy to look at what we can do to try to alleviate it. Transport Canberra will work with Canberra Metro to investigate the opportunity to add those light rail services, operating to both the city and Gungahlin, and to give Canberrans a realistic alternative to getting in their cars. Introducing the changes will take time, as the contract between the territory and Canberra Metro provides for a lead-in time for the introduction of additional services. I will update the Assembly in November with the progress of those investigations.
With the success of light rail stage 1, the ACT government is looking forward to extending light rail to other parts of the city as part of a city-wide light rail network. That will help to further transform our public transport system into an attractive, integrated transport network for our growing city so that even more Canberrans can benefit from light rail. We want to extend the benefits that we are seeing on the Gungahlin to city corridor to other parts of Canberra. I am really looking forward to continuing to work on how we are doing that, particularly in the second stage, from the city to Woden, and then in future stages that have been outlined in our light rail master plan.
Once again, I thank Mr Pettersson for providing me with the opportunity to give an update on the successful introduction of light rail operations and the enthusiastic adoption of light rail that we have seen from Canberrans. I am looking forward to providing an update on how we have gone in terms of exploring the feasibility of increasing light rail services further for Canberrans.
MISS C BURCH (Kurrajong) (5.35): It is great to see a Labor backbencher bringing forward a motion that extends beyond the usual virtue signalling and flogging of
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