Page 1348 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 2021
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are segregated from car traffic that leave footpaths and existing shared paths for people moving at a more relaxed pace.
We know from local research by Women’s Health Matters, as well as vast amounts of international research, that safe and accessible active travel paths and bus stop locations are about good lighting, active use of the space by a diversity of people in the community, and good passive surveillance where paths and bus stops are visible to the front of houses and shops, rather than back fences. I welcome all the work that the ACT government and TCCS are doing to improve that.
The overall strategy for Canberra’s public transport system is a hub and spoke model. It has been very focused on moving people to and from employment in the city and town centres. This focus on employment-related travel reflects some inbuilt biases about the purpose of our investment in public transport around the economic value of people who travel for paid work.
It is vitally important that we make use of the data about where and when people travel who are not in paid work and recognise the value in investing in transport systems that support parents, unpaid carers and people who engage in our community in ways that do not involve paid work. For that reason, that qualitative research and consultation with people is going to be so helpful, as well as the access reference group.
So improving measures to facilitate trip chaining and non-work related travel—such as the integrated ticketing system, the increasing park and rides, the hop on, hop off nature of high frequency light rail coming to Woden, which I am very excited about, and increasing off-peak bus services—do help, as does integrating our bus and light rail systems with safe and useful active travel paths.
I support the work to improve safety in useful locations of bus stops and pathways and to better understand the travel needs of people who are reliant on public transport. Instead of just going back to the old normal, I welcome this move to a better normal, with more flexible and sustainable travel for all of us. Let’s do more of it.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Business—Better Regulation Taskforce
Ministerial statement
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra—Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Business and Better Regulation, Minister for Human Rights and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.34): I am pleased today to report to the Assembly on the Better Regulation Taskforce and the work our government is doing to make it easier to start, run and grow a business in the ACT. Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, never has the role of government been clearer: to respond quickly, to invest, to support our most vulnerable, and to protect and shape the local economy. The ACT government recognises the invaluable contribution that business, particularly small business, makes to Canberra.
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