Page 936 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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These are the kinds of projects that protect and create local jobs while improving amenity and livability across Canberra’s suburbs. We recognise that this kind of local government investment is an important up-front driver of Canberra’s economic recovery now and for the months to come.
In addition to fast-tracking small works, the ACT government is getting on with delivering our significant infrastructure pipeline through the budget. I will have the chance to focus on light rail in speaking on Major Projects Canberra later in the debate, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that this budget continues the work we are doing to deliver stage 2 to Woden, something that we are committed to.
Building light rail to Woden will help to create reliable and comfortable transport with a transport spine, north to south, that better connects our major town centres. It will make it easier to get between them and improve our integrated transport network, connected with buses. It will give Canberrans more options for when and how they travel so that we can all do our part to help reduce Canberra’s emissions and climate change. And it will support investment in vibrant places along the route for people to live, work and socialise in as our city continues to grow.
Through the light rail survey, we have heard that we are seeing more people who are choosing to use public transport for the first time. Forty-three per cent of people who have been surveyed said that they had not used public transport before—buses—before using light rail. That is a fantastic result and demonstrates the real power of light rail—certainly the first stage. We hope that can be extended through the second stage. That is what we call a bang for our buck. That sort of comment from the opposition just demonstrates that they are not really committed to light rail.
Light rail stage 1 came in under budget; we got a very good price for it. It is delivering higher than expected results in terms of patronage—to the extent that, just prior to the pandemic starting in the first three weeks of term 1 of 2020, we saw a 10.26 per cent increase in the number of people using public transport across the board, light rail and buses. It demonstrated the powerful effect that light rail was having and also the effect of the extra rapid buses throughout Canberra in driving public transport growth.
Patronage has come down during the pandemic, as it has in every single city around the world, as a result of public health directions that were in place, and are still in place, asking people not to use public transport during peak times. We are working on recovery, and that is why we are committed to the Transport Canberra Recovery Plan.
Light rail is not the only important item of transport infrastructure on our agenda. Through the budget we are continuing to progress design and construction on upgrades to the Monaro Highway, with the preliminary sketch plans for the Lanyon Drive interchange, part of the Monaro Highway upgrade, expected to be released for public consultation towards the middle of this year.
Through co-funding with the Australian government, we are also undertaking a feasibility study and developing preliminary sketch plans for options to improve
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