Page 3224 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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community input, including a focus on a better connected and maintained path network. That includes how we use the $4.3 million that the ACT government has allocated, delivering on our election commitments to better maintain our paths, as well as the $2 million we have committed to extend the Age-Friendly Suburbs Program to four suburbs. We are consulting with those suburbs at the moment about what they would like to see, not only in terms of the maintenance of paths, but in terms of improved ramps that are safe for people who are using our active travel network, and any other improvements that will make it safe to walk around our streets in those suburbs that typically have an older cohort of residents compared to the rest of Canberra.
As part of the actions that we are proposing to take under the active travel plan, which we have been consulting on, we want to continue to deliver on our Age-Friendly Suburbs Program to address footpath quality, gaps and missing links. We want to make sure that we are progressively upgrading footpaths. That is being informed by the work that has been undertaken through footpath audits that have been funded throughout the city from the program that we implemented during COVID-19, the Jobs for Canberrans program. As Minister Davidson mentioned, we are upgrading our bus stops to make sure that they are all accessible by the end of this year, in order to meet accessibility standards.
We are continuing to build on priority community path links identified by the community, and we are looking to prioritise the investment criteria to have a particular focus on walking around areas that are of interest to the community, such as schools—many grandparents take their grandchildren to school—the shops, which are frequented by many people in our community, including, particularly on weekdays, the older community in Canberra, and public transport stops as connections on our footpath network.
We are also proposing to invest in making walking more comfortable by responding to community requests for seating and shade. We know that older Canberrans often require seating, and that is part of what we are proposing in the active travel plan. Importantly, we are incorporating universal design principles in design guidance and infrastructure standards to ensure equity of access to public spaces. There is a significant amount of work going on.
There is one further measure that I particularly wanted to highlight. Again, it is another commitment that we made at the election, in addition to expanding the Age-Friendly Suburbs Program and the investment in path maintenance, none of which the Liberals committed to at the election. The other commitment that we made and that we are delivering on was around undertaking a feasibility study of an on-demand transport system that would potentially replace the flexible transport system.
That work is underway at the moment, and we are looking forward to considering the outcomes of that feasibility study to understand how we can improve the bus service that picks people up, particularly older people and those with mobility issues or a disability, from their front door so that they can get to the local shops, a rapid bus link,
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