Page 2904 - Week 13 - Thursday, 23 November 1989
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MR WOOD (11.55): The major problem for the ACT in its transport strategy is the public scorn for public transport. People just do not want to use buses. That is historical. Obviously, in earlier years it was based on a small population with ready access to the city and in later years it was because of the dispersed planning of the city, the Y plan.
For so much of our history there was the luxury of parking just where you wanted it. That was until the last five or 10 years. There was and there still is in the community an expectation that people can park close to their work. Times have changed but the expectation still exists. That expectation and the fact of the former easy access to parking are a clear result of planning, and very careful planning at that. In this most well planned of cities the car was king and still is. As a result, we have an excellent road system. As the city has grown, it has presented us with the problems that we now face. The planners are now telling us, "Get out of your car" - and we must agree with that - "The car is no longer to be king. It must abdicate". That is especially the case in Civic. We were told this repeatedly in our committee as we looked at the future of the Canberra Times site. Civic is at the limit of what is environmentally acceptable. I do not think it matters much whether we have Commonwealth public servants there, Mr Moore, or people working in law firms or whatever; they are still people, they are still taking a place in a building, and their cars are still taking parking places.
Mr Moore: Yes, but we can have some influence over who goes where.
MR WOOD: We certainly can, and I would support you on that. Any of the decisions we make should properly be part of the integrated transport study. That is why this document is so important and so useful. The integration of our strategy is something I want to develop. It seems to me that, with this document and the plans of this Government, we are taking measures to solve the problem. But, while we do so, there are other measures being taken in this city to compound that problem further.
In the last week or two I have been reading - and I encourage others to do so - the community consultation report of the Gungahlin external travel study, or GETS. I refer to another document, the former NCDC Gungahlin plan, and how that is to develop. Gungahlin is most likely - not certainly, yet - the next major development in this city. What is going to happen with Gungahlin and the road connections to Gungahlin is going to have a very major impact, Mr Moore and the Assembly, on what happens in Civic.
What is happening with the planning of Gungahlin as I read GETS and as I read the Gungahlin document is only going to confound what is happening in this Government's policy
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