Page 1211 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 4 May 2022
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We are transitioning away from fossil fuels in our government fleet vehicles and in our buses. Soon they will all be fossil-fuel free, I hope. This is really good progress, because transport accounts for over 60 per cent of our tracked emissions. But we do not just need to electrify our transport; we also need to improve it. If we want to help more people get out of their cars, we need to make buses a better option. Canberra is a city that was built for the car, but we cannot stay that way. Not everyone can drive, not everyone wants to drive, and not everyone can afford to drive. I meet so many people who choose not to drive for environmental reasons or because they cannot afford to buy or run a car, or a second car, or because they physically cannot drive. We need to look after our people.
There are lots of other reasons for a growing city like ours to become less reliant on cars. Cars need a lot of space, and that is really expensive. They need space on our roads. They need parking space when they get to where they are going. They need space at the traffic lights. Next time you see someone on a bike or in a bus, wave at them and smile, because they are not in front of you at the traffic lights and they are not competing with you for a car park. Those roads and car parks are expensive to build and maintain. They take up room we could otherwise use for housing or businesses or growing food. Cars that do not need to be on our roads are also taking space from those who do need to be there.
No matter how good our active and public transport is, we will have some people who need to drive. I am thinking in particular of a few groups of people like delivery drivers, some people with a disability who find that active and public transport do not work for them, shiftworkers who finish at 3 am, tradies who carry tools for the job, and cleaners and carers who work in private homes and move from one house to the next. These people need their cars, and we need to make sure that we have left enough room for them.
But a lot of us probably do not need to drive as we do, and if everyone drives everywhere our city will choke on cars. Congestion is a real problem here. Growing up, we did not really have traffic in Canberra, but now congestion is growing at a rate three times faster than in other mainland cities. We cannot keep doing it the way we have done it. If everyone drives everywhere, soon we will all be stuck in traffic. Canberra’s cost of congestion is predicted to reach over half a billion dollars a year by 2031. We need to do something about that.
If we want people to use public transport, we need to make sure that they do not feel forced to drive because there is no other option. We know from our last household travel survey that many people do feel like that. More than three-quarters of all journeys in the ACT were made by private motor vehicle. Less than five per cent of journeys were made by public transport. That survey was conducted before light rail, so the balance may have shifted, but I do not think it has yet shifted much for buses.
Walking, riding, catching the bus and catching light rail need to be really good choices, if not the best choices. People need to know that there are reliable and reasonable ways to get around. We need to change to our infrastructure and our traffic priority. We need change the basic levels of investment in our public and active
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