Page 3227 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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I would like to thank them and the organisations who represent and work with them every day. There are many fantastic organisations in Canberra, such as Council on the Ageing ACT and Communities@Work. There is a huge list that work with older people, and I would like to thank them for their work. I commend my amendment to Ms Davidson’s proposed amendment to the Assembly, as this is work that should already be done, as stipulated in the Age-Friendly City Program.
MS DAVIDSON (Murrumbidgee—Assistant Minister for Families and Community Services, Minister for Disability, Minister for Justice Health, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (3.36): I will speak for a few moments to Ms Lawder’s amendment to my proposed amendment to her motion. I am very genuinely keen to see greater use of data in planning our transport network. The unfortunate thing is that MyWay data alone will not give us all of the information that is needed.
There are a few reasons for that. One of the reasons is that, while MyWay cards tell us where people tap on and tap off and when they have travelled, if the card is not registered—and a large number of the cards being used in Canberra are not registered—we do not have any information about their gender, their age or anything else about the user. It is important for us to have information about gender, age and a number of other factors in planning a good transport network that works well for everyone. That is why the ACT and Queanbeyan household travel survey data gives us a much more complete picture. It tells us the person’s age group, their gender, what their reason for travelling is, and whether they have to take someone else with them on their journey. That gives us a much more complete picture.
The other difficulty about MyWay data being our main data source for planning our transport network is that it really only tells us about people’s public transport use. It does not tell us about the people who are not using public transport, and it does not tell us about people who might be making use of our active travel pathway network, car sharing or many other ways of getting from point A to point B.
In 2020 I did a survey of people who were using active travel pathways throughout Canberra, to try to get a better understanding of where we might want to improve cycle paths and shared walking paths. We found through that work that there are a lot of people in Canberra who are using those pathways that we might not otherwise have heard about. There were a lot of people using electric wheelchairs on shared paths to get around their neighbourhood. Lots of people were riding bikes and taking people with them. They did not want to ride their bike on the road; they wanted a separated pathway.
These are all things that we do not find out from MyWay data because that is primarily about bus and light rail travel. That ACT and Queanbeyan household travel survey will be our best source of understanding people’s travel needs, and I look forward to seeing the data and to discussing it more with Ms Lawder.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (3.39): I seek leave to make a very brief closing statement. I have already spoken, but I seek leave to speak again briefly.
Leave granted.
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