Page 926 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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rail. We are broadly committed to an integrated public transport system that services all of Canberra with safe, reliable, efficient and accessible services, and I am not sure that is what we have got at the moment.
During my time in the Assembly, I have watched with dismay as this government has trashed and dismantled so many of the popular bus routes, particularly in outlying suburbs. I know that my colleague Ms Lawder would agree with me that our ongoing constituent engagement in Tuggeranong, in particular, has resulted in dozens of conversations with suburban people who have ceased using the bus because it no longer services their needs. It is no surprise that the most recent data suggests that bus travel in and out of Tuggeranong, Woden and Belconnen is down since the establishment of the tram, and that is irrespective of any COVID effect.
Of course, while all of this is playing out, the minister insists that light rail is hitting the spot. A lot of the rhetoric in recent weeks has come from a recently released survey of tram use from Transport Canberra. The media broadly reported the comments from Minister Steel without really delving all that deeply into them. This was a Transport Canberra survey of light rail users, so these are people using the tram. Of course, the survey suggested that they were all using the tram—that 100 per cent of light rail passengers are using the tram, and that is great.
Mr Steel’s media release associated with those survey results indicates that light rail patronage is back to within 75 per cent of pre-COVID levels, and that is great. I also note that it appears we have had a bounce back in this city a little faster than in some other cities. But I am still not sure that these are numbers that we should be getting all that excited about. The most recent quarterly figures show that our daily average boardings number—this is for light rail—is less than 8,000. Given that most of the journeys are return, that would suggest we are talking about 4,000 Canberrans each day. Granted, I am working on a seven-day figure here; if we were working on a five-day figure, those numbers would go up to just shy of 10,000. But let us work on a seven-day figure. It is just shy of 8,000; so we are talking about 4,000 Canberrans each day.
You need to consider, Madam Speaker, that many of those passengers would have been riding the bus if the tram was not there. And let’s be optimistic about this. Let’s take an indicator from the Transport Canberra patronage survey, which showed that 70 per cent were more likely to use public transport now that light rail was in operation. They were more likely. It did not suggest that they would not be using public transport if the light rail was not there; it was just that they were more likely. From that figure, I think we can extrapolate that potentially 2,000 of those current 4,000 passengers per day would have caught the bus anyway. At the end of the day, we are talking about 2,000 people.
I would acknowledge that the figure is growing. I would acknowledge that, when we get the new quarterly figures for the quarter that has just gone, they will be somewhat higher, particularly because of the seasonal ups and downs of public transport usage, which traditionally shows February as the most used month in terms of public transport. But when you consider what we have done in terms of the spend and all of
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