Page 4060 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
always says that we are not comparing apples with apples, and I get that. He says that it is a direct bus—an express bus, pretty much—that goes from Woden to Civic, and under the tram we will have all of these additional stops. But you are robbing Peter to pay Paul there, aren’t you, because it means that, for everyone who is funnelled onto the tram, it takes increased travel time to get from Woden to Civic.
I have done Woden to Civic on the bus in under 14 minutes. Of course, we are talking about a much longer time on the tram. When you add in the time required to change from bus to tram, then change again from tram to bus on the way home, the increased daily time in public transport travel time will be sufficient to pass the threshold for many that would push public transport users back into cars.
We do not want to see that. Public transport policy should not be about densification, it should not be about selling apartments or capturing lease variation charges; public transport policy should be about public transport outcomes.
As is the case with a number of motions that I have brought into this place around the tram, those opposite know that within this motion there are some areas of merit. But it would be politically blasphemous for them to agree with any of it because the tram is now a religion which nobody is allowed to question in any way. Anyone who dares to tell the truth will be excommunicated from the church, like that heathen Jon Stanhope.
For Labor and the Greens, the tram has become an addiction. As with many addictions, they just crave more and more of it, to the point that they do not have enough money to support the habit. The people of the suburbs know too well that this government is stealing from them to support the habit, and they know that it will only get worse.
We know that the minister will argue that the commencement of the tram service to Woden will lead to the better utilisation of bus services on other routes. I would say to the minister: we have heard all of that before. We heard it in the lead-up to stage 1. We were told, prior to the commencement of stage 1 of the tram, that services would improve on the south side, and they have not.
I note that in some areas of the north side you can point to increased frequency. I knock on a lot of doors in Tuggeranong, and the trashing of the bus network in the south ranks as the fourth most likely thing for a constituent to raise with me at the door. Given the very small percentage of people in the south who are currently using the bus, that figure is amazing. I would say that the minister has some serious work to do to convince people from Tuggeranong to get back on the bus. I would also suggest that he certainly will not be in the position of trying to convince them to get on the tram, because we all know that it will not get to Tuggeranong until at least 2060.
I want to use my personal public transport journey from Theodore as an example. As things stand at the moment, I would walk for two or three minutes to the terminal on Chippindall, and I would take the 79 to Calwell; that bus would take about eight minutes. From there I would transfer to the R5. It takes me straight here; it drops me out at the front—37 minutes for that particular leg of the journey. The total time is well under an hour, probably slightly under 55 minutes.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video