Page 3804 - Week 11 - Thursday, 24 November 2022
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active travel plan, and work that we have been doing with the Women’s Centre for Health Matters. I refer to their work in looking at women’s safety, particularly as it relates to public transport.
We have 80,000 streetlights across Canberra, and we have been progressively upgrading those streetlights through a contract with Electrix. Those have been providing new, more modern streetlights, which means we can make sure, through smart technology, that, when a streetlight goes out, we are aware of it and we can get onto it more quickly.
The government is also progressively upgrading streetlighting as part of other community infrastructure projects and improvements to our parks and open spaces. For example, we have upgraded streetlighting as part of the Yerrabi Pond upgrades that we have been undertaking around the foreshore there. There are the upcoming Tuggeranong foreshore upgrades and Mawson placemaking improvements. I refer also to the new Mawson park and ride off Beasley Street, near Farrer, and various road infrastructure projects. We also have the streetlight infill program, which has been an ongoing program, and we have provided supplementary funding for that through recent programs, including having a focus on providing further lighting in public transport stops which do not have currently have streetlighting near them, in areas like Mitchell.
MR BRADDOCK: Has the government undertaken a dark spot study to identify where lighting is not up to standard?
MR STEEL: The government is aware of where there are not currently streetlights in Canberra. Not every street in Canberra was originally built with streetlights. We see that in some of our heritage, garden city suburbs, particularly directly around the city in places like Ainslie and Reid. We have been progressively using our programs to put in place streetlighting in those locations, and make sure that we also take into account the heritage nature of those suburbs.
We are certainly interested in hearing from the community if they have a location where they would like to see streetlighting put in as part of the streetlight infill program. That is assessed against a range of factors, including assessing it against the ACT government’s sustainable transport policy, to look at where those streetlights are, in relation to active travel. There is an environmental weighting assessed around the impact on trees, light pollution, energy consumption and flora and fauna. There is also a community weighting that is assessed as part of that, around security, public safety and road safety.
We are happy to get those requests through, to see where we can put in streetlighting that is likely to provide the most benefit for the community.
MS CLAY: Minister, has the government looked at its audit of footpaths and shared paths against the streetlights to see whether these are impacting on night-time active travel?
MR STEEL: I am happy to take that question on notice.
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