Page 4069 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 30 November 2022
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bus that happens to go from near your house and arrive to near where your job is. It does not suit those who do not live near a direct route. It does not suit people who are trip chaining. It does not help parents who are taking their kids to school. It does not help retirees going to medical appointments or people with disabilities going to the shops outside peak hours.
Our network needs to cater for a wide variety of people and we need to include them all. We need to set up a really good, integrated system and we need to involve the community in those discussions, as well as involving great advocacy groups like PTCBR. We need to monitor what people say, how they use our public transport and where the problems are. We need to be responsive and we need to do a lot of other things to make our public transport better.
We do not need to set up a completely parallel duplication and we certainly do not want to pay for one. I do not know whether we will need to duplicate some direct bus services mirroring light rail; we might. But it is not good transport planning to commit to a full duplication right now. It would be an irresponsible use of limited resources. There are other things we need to spend that money on.
We need a fully electric fleet. We need more buses. We need hourly weekend services. We need to fix our footpaths and bike paths so that people can get to their stop. We also need to roll out light rail as soon as possible. We need that network to extend from Gungahlin to Tuggeranong and then all the way out to Kippax and Ginninderry, and that is how we will see greater uptake of public transport in Canberra. So why commit funds to something we do not yet know that we need when we have so much that we absolutely do need?
Our two biggest districts for journey to work public transport ridership are now Gungahlin and the inner north. That is because of light rail. Let us build on that success and give more people this great option. Light rail is running on 100 per cent renewable electricity. It reduces our emissions, it reduces congestion and it helps people get to where they need to go.
I thank Mr Parton. I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can improve our public transport system. I will continue to advocate for a gold standard public transport network for the whole city. The Greens will not be supporting this motion.
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) (3.32): Light rail should be part of a transport network that also includes buses, active travel and cars. The light rail component is a very efficient way to move large numbers of people between two points, such as thousands of people from the Woden Town Centre to the city for office work or to study at ANU or to access the shops and services there.
According to the 2021 census, a total of 4,212 people live in Woden and work in the city or the inner north, and an additional 2,010 people live in Woden and work in the Parliamentary Triangle. So there are more than 6,000 people every day just from Woden heading north to go to work.
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