Page 1212 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 4 May 2022
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transport. We need to change how we think about the public and private realm, and we need to remove the barriers to using public transport. The good news is that we already know what the barriers are. Canberrans have told us loud and clear, and repeatedly.
Transport Canberra’s surveys show that the frequency and reliability of buses are some of the biggest problems we have to fix if we want more people catching a bus. What does frequency and reliability look like? It looks like a bus service that gets you where you need to go, when you need to get there. We need confidence in that. We need to know that our buses will run often, turn up on time and take us to our destination, whether that is a Sunday, a Monday or any other day. We do not live Monday-to-Friday lives and we cannot rely on a transport system that only works Monday to Friday.
Light rail stage 1 showed us what a frequent, reliable service can achieve. In March 2022 it ran on time at an impressive rate of 99.97 per cent. It runs at least every 15 minutes at quieter weekend times and as often as every five minutes in peak weekday periods. That is a frequent, reliable service. It has been so popular that I suspect in the near future we will be having debates about how we can increase its capacity.
Our buses sometimes reach this level of service. On trunk routes, at peak times on weekdays, the buses run often and people use them a lot. The corridor from Belconnen to the city via the University of Canberra and Bruce is the busiest corridor we have. The high-frequency services’ morning and evening peak, with the rapids 2, 3 and 4, see incredible volumes of passengers transported, and most buses have standing room only. That is a lot of cars off our roads.
We know the barriers are lack of reliability and frequency, and we have seen what happens when we remove those, with light rail and with the Belconnen to Civic rapid bus corridor. But, unfortunately, not all buses run like that, particularly when it comes to our weekend services. I hear from so many people about how bad our buses are on weekends. There is a student I know in Belconnen. He busks at Jamison. Anyone who knows Jamo knows that shopping on Saturday afternoon and Trash and Treasure on a Sunday morning are really busy. They are a great time to go busking, but his route runs once every two hours. It is really hard for him to get to his job. He needs to spend half a day to do an hour or two of busking, and sometimes the bus does not come.
I know a woman who could afford to buy a townhouse in Belconnen or a car, but not both. She bought the home, moved in and then found she could not see her housebound mother. She could not go on the weekend because the bus was too infrequent, and she could not go during the week because she works to pay off the mortgage. This is heartbreaking.
A lot of people give up. If you are deciding whether to catch the bus or drive and you know you cannot go out on the weekends unless you have a car, you will buy the car if you can afford to. Once you own that car, why not drive to work and to the shops and everywhere else? You have already paid for it; you might as well. So many people could get by without a car or with one fewer cars for their household, but they
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