Page 457 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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addressing bed block; it is also important in terms of patient experience. We do not want patients to be in the hospital longer than they need to be. It is not good for them to have that experience.
Another element of the emergency department redesign project is a review of triage processes and workforce models that support patient flow within the emergency department. I spoke the other day about needing to ensure that people who are not going to be admitted to the hospital are seen and discharged from the emergency department in a timely way. We are speaking in detail about the things that we are doing.
Transport Canberra—Whitlam bus services
MS CLAY: My question is to the Minister for Transport and City Services and relates to bus services in new suburbs. Given that we know there was good uptake from day one for bus services for Coombs and Wright, and given that we know that transport habits are formed when people first purchase and then move into a new property, can you guarantee that the residents of the new suburb of Whitlam will have regular bus services from the moment that they move into their new homes?
MR STEEL: I thank Ms Clay for her question. I agree that it is important to have bus services as soon as possible, as people move into new suburbs, so that they can form those habits of using public transport rather than relying on private vehicles, particularly to commute through to the city. Extensive planning has been underway for well over a decade for Molonglo, including transport planning for the suburb. That included extensive work that was undertaken with expert advice from transport planner Jarrett Walker, who has written a whole case study in his book Human Transit about Molonglo transport planning. This book was used at the time to inform the estate development plans that have been associated with the rollout of Molonglo and will continue to inform our work around transport planning for future stages of Molonglo, including Molonglo 3.
We know that the Molonglo River bridge will be a key enabling project for transport in the Molonglo region. We would like to see the Rapid 10 service—which has been incredibly popular and which will also have stops directly outside Whitlam on John Gorton Drive—provided to that suburb in the future. But, of course, that will rely on the bridge being built. In the future, the ACT government will look at whether we can extend that north, potentially to Belconnen.
We also want to make sure that those people have a good trip to the city, so rapid transit is going to be important for the future of Molonglo suburbs. We know how incredibly popular those services have been since we introduced them in 2019, and we have since increased the frequency. We also know that the connecting feeder route bus services are going to play an incredibly important role. The exact timing of that will be determined once we go through the network update. (Time expired.)
MS CLAY: Minister, I am really pleased to hear about all that detailed planning work and those future plans, but what I really want to know is whether the residents will have a bus service from the first day they move in, because once they have bought a
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