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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 376 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

In relation to the other two bus lanes, you have a situation where there are two lanes of traffic on both of those roads, where there is good opportunity for the traffic to move, for people to get around slow vehicles. I have been in a situation with the Athllon Drive bus lane of being stuck behind some piece of road equipment or something like that travelling at 40 kilometres an hour and feeling a certain amount of frustration because I could not zip into the bus lane and get around this vehicle.

Mr De Domenico: But the same thing happens elsewhere too.

MR WHITECROSS: Yes, it does. That is a frustration that people feel. It is not as big an issue on a two-lane road. You do not have the same problem of being stuck behind slow vehicles. It seems to me that there are some specific circumstances which mean that these other bus lanes are important.

Another important consideration is that the amount of traffic on Adelaide Avenue and Yarra Glen is substantially greater for a greater period of the day than is the case with Athllon Drive.

Mr De Domenico: Which is the reason why you should open it up.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr De Domenico says that that is a reason for opening it up. It is also a reason for not opening it up, Mr De Domenico, because at 12 o'clock there is not much traffic on Athllon Drive.

Mr De Domenico: Midnight or midday?

MR WHITECROSS: In the middle of the day. There is not much traffic on Athllon Drive then, so the traffic is not slowing the buses down very much. At 12 o'clock on Adelaide Avenue the place is chockers with traffic, and you have a good potential to slow buses down.

It seems to me that a balance needs to be struck, and certainly the Assembly needs to have more information before committing itself to what Mr Hird is proposing, which is opening up these lanes. Most importantly, a balance has to be struck, in the view of the Labor Party, between facilitating car drivers and facilitating public transport. Any move to allow other vehicles to use bus transit lanes has the effect of slowing down bus times, and slowing down bus times makes buses less attractive. If you add three minutes to the time it takes a bus to get from Woden to Civic, that is a significant disincentive for bus commuters and will cost ACTION or, if Mr De Domenico gets his way, somebody else a lot of money in running costs for the bus service. Every minute of extra running time will cost the public transport system money. Multiplied by the number of services that run up and down Adelaide Avenue every day, that is a very significant amount of money.

I do not think it is as simple as saying, "It worked for Athllon Drive, therefore we have to try it everywhere else". It has slowed down bus times on Athllon Drive; it will slow down bus times on Adelaide Avenue-Yarra Glen, and presumably it will slow down bus times on Barry Drive. We need to have a proper understanding of what those implications

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