Page 3376 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
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In particular, we know that residents are flocking to new rapid bus services that reach further into our suburbs. I will not go through all of them but I highlight one of them that was mentioned and that I think is directly correlated with the increase that we have seen in patronage in the Molonglo Valley that would not have occurred in the absence of changes to bus services. The rapid 10 was instituted under the new network and provides frequent, all-day, direct services from the Molonglo Valley suburbs of Coombs, Wright, Denman Prospect right into Civic and the parliamentary triangle via the Cotter Road.
We have heard from Canberrans who love these new services. Indeed, just last month, as we have discussed in this Assembly before, the Canberra Times highlighted the case of Ms Julie Peat, a resident of Conder in the Lanyon Valley who works in the parliamentary triangle and has been the beneficiary of the rapid 5 service which saves her 20 minutes each way on her commute each day and avoids the need to change buses at Woden. And Ms Peat is not alone.
If you ask residents of Holt, Macgregor or Dunlop whether they like their new direct bus service to Barton on rapid 2, which avoids the need to change buses in Civic and runs every 10 minutes at peak times, or residents of Burrinjuck Crescent in Duffy who can now use the rapid 7 service to travel to the city all-day, seven days a week, and do it two minutes faster than the former route 725 Xpresso service, there are very positive comments to make about the new network.
The government also recognises that Canberrans living in different parts of our city need different things from our public transport network. And that is complex. During public consultation we heard from many Canberrans in outer suburbs that the government’s original proposal did not quite strike the right balance between frequent all-day services and more targeted services such as express commuter services during peak times and dedicated school bus services.
We listened to that feedback and made changes during the draft stage of the network to address the concerns of residents in outer suburbs. And that included extending the rapid 7 further into the suburbs of Weston Creek, restructuring local buses in Weston Creek and Molonglo to connect directly with the Woden town centre. We added three peak bus routes from southern Tuggeranong directly to the city, providing a fast, single-seat option for commuters in peak times. In those areas we have added 78 extra dedicated school bus services from what we originally consulted on, bringing the total number of dedicated school bus services to more than 220, with many serving students living in outer suburbs, particularly in Mr Parton’s electorate of Brindabella.
Every region in Canberra now has a rapid or local bus service that operates on the same routes every day of the week, making it much easier to use our transport network, regardless of which day you may be using it. They start earlier in the morning and finish later in the evening and connect more Canberrans with their town centre and the wider public transport network as part of that hub-and-spoke model.
As members may recall from recent debates in this place, in the first 11 weeks after the end of the free travel period we have seen an increase in the number of people
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