Page 3640 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 22 November 2022
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long-term goal. But Minister Steel has explained, really clearly, why duplicating Pialligo Avenue is a bad idea at the moment—that the duplication may need to be torn up and moved later if the airport runway is moved. It is a terrible investment for the ACT to build a road that we know we may have to demolish. It only makes sense if you are the company that might get two contracts out of it.
In any case, the ACT should not base our major transport and planning decisions on knee-jerk directions made by a federal senator in the absence of detailed policy work. We need to think about our needs and our available resources, and we need to build the best we can with what we have. We have to do this based on sound policy, and we have to do it in the context of the pressing problems that we have.
Over 60 per cent of our tracked emissions come from transport, primarily from cars. The IPCC is calling for transit-oriented development and much, much better public and active transport. United Nations recommends that 20 per cent of federal transport funding each year should be allocated to non-motorised transport.
Canberra’s congestion is growing three times faster than that of any other mainland Australian capital. We know that building more roads does not fix congestion. More roads fill up with more cars. This is called induced demand, and no city on the planet has managed to build enough roads to beat this problem. We have serious problems with the cost-of-living, and that includes the price of petrol and diesel and the affordability of all of our transport. These problems could be eased with good access to public and active transport. This the background environment against which we have to make all these major project and policy decisions.
In the ACT we have a really clear transport hierarchy. Public and active transport are prioritised above private motor vehicle. The 2020 transport policy has quietly dropped this transport hierarchy, but it is still identified as an important goal in our 2025 Climate Change Strategy. It is there because it is sound policy. It does address our big problems, and we know it works.
I am really delighted that we are getting additional funding from the federal government for Canberra’s light-rail system. When you look over the last decade, it is clear that active and public transport projects in the ACT have been underfunded by the commonwealth. It is time that we reverse that trend.
The federal Liberal government gave the ACT $1.3 billion for transport between 2013 and 2022. A mere $60 million from the Asset Recycling Scheme Bonus was given to the first stage of light rail, and only $132.5 million given to light-rail stage 2A. The sums for active travel are much, much, lower. That is less than $200 million out of a total of $1.3 billion.
Of the transport funding the ACT has received from federal government, less than 15 per cent has been given to active and public transport. That does not match our goals in any of our transport policies. It does not match what the IPCC is telling us that we need to build now and for the future. It does not match what the UN says responsible governments should do. It does not address any of the big problems that we know we have.
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