Page 2906 - Week 13 - Thursday, 23 November 1989
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GETS, that if we considerably increased the number of people who used buses, from about 12 per cent, I think, to 25 per cent, we could do away with about one lane of traffic. So a considerable increase really makes very little difference to what we need in roads. The logical, sensible solution seems to me to be that, if we do not want cars, then we have to be serious about providing public transport. Obviously we need to go to the O-bahn system or to light rail, but to do that we have to ensure that the commuters are in a position where they can use it.
It seems to me to be a simple matter of planning. I am sure I could sit down and in 10 minutes draw up a configuration of a major town area that would take a rail through and would enable people to use a rail system that would take them to Civic, where most of them are going, and maybe to other places as well. It is a planning matter, and I am sure that we can plan to get people off the roads.
The starting point should be the transport system, not the documents that I have referred to - the former NCDC plan. The starting point should not be putting a suburb there and then holding to the traditional major transport modes. (Extension of time granted)
The traditional starting point should not be used. Do not put the suburb there and think how to connect it, but draw your transport links first and then develop the suburb. I am sure that that can be done, and I would urge that measure on our planners. If that is done, Mr Moore, Dr Kinloch and I will have a much more comfortable task with our constituents whose environments are threatened in the future with this massive freeway connection that will otherwise be necessary.
To conclude, I want to make again a very important point. The document that we have here says it properly: we need an integrated strategy. It has to be integrated. At the present moment it is going to be very, very difficult to achieve that, given the division of planning that we have in this city.
MR JENSEN (12.07): Mr Speaker, in my opening comments I think it is appropriate to indicate to the house that the Rally supports the comments and the remarks made by Mr Moore. I will be coming to some of the comments made by Mr Wood later on, towards the end of my speech.
Mr Speaker, the consultation paper, Transport ACT, has been released presumably as a means of stimulating debate in the public arena on the whole issue of developing public transport and traffic management strategies which will serve all of Canberra into the twenty-first century. There is no doubt that it has done that. At least it has got one part of its strategy correct. Unfortunately, it falls lamentably short of meeting these ideals. While it contains a few short-term proposals for regulating parking and encouraging less single-occupant car commuting and more
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