Page 3641 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 22 November 2022

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The 2004 Sustainable Transport Plan for the ACT sets really ambitious targets about what Canberra’s transport mode share of journeys to work should be by 2026. We are looking at what proportion of journeys we think should be made by active travel. We have interim targets set to help us strive towards those goals, but we are not meeting those targets, because we are not following through with the real commitment that we know we need.

In 2001, 13 per cent of journeys to work were made by walking, riding or public transport. Our Sustainable Transport Plan says that by 2026 we want 30 per cent of those journeys made by walking, riding or public transport. We want to go from 13 per cent to 30 per cent. That is how we are going to fix congestion and that is how we are going take real climate action. It is a huge leap—and, unfortunately, we are not getting there.

We were making progress until 2011, but since then we have not been. In 2021, those who walked, rode or caught public transport to work made up just 12.4 per cent of journeys to work. We are aiming for 30 per cent and we are meeting 12 or 13 per cent. Our mode share has actually gone down. We have become more car dependent, and we have become more car dependent at a time when we are saying we need more sustainable transport.

It is, frankly, little wonder when our investment in transport infrastructure is so heavily focused on roads. Roads cost a lot. They are really expensive. The 2022-23 budget set out $286 million just in maintenance. That is not for building roads or duplicating them; that is just maintaining the roads we have. It is obviously essential that we maintain the roads that we have. Road safety and quality are incredibly important.

We had the wettest October on record in Canberra this year. We know that climate extremes will make maintaining our city more expensive and more difficult. We have to maintain the ones we have, and we have to think really, really carefully about what new roads we build, and where. We must always do so on the basis that public or active transport might be a better buy.

We also know that building roads that encourage high-speed driving is in itself a road safety issue. The best way to improve road safety is to do it from the start by design. When we build new roads, we need to design them so that we are having good traffic flow and we are slowing cars down, particularly when we have got vulnerable road users around. We have always got to remember that the best way to beat congestion is to give people fantastic choices so that they do not have to drive to every single place that they are going. Taking cars off the road is the best way to beat congestion, and designing our roads to be safe in the first instance is the best way to help safety.

I am really glad that we have got this $85.9 million for public transport, but it actually will not touch the sides of what we are owed for decades of underfunding on ACT infrastructure. What should instead happen is that the commonwealth should be increasing funding to the ACT for infrastructure projects, particularly for active and public transport.


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