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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 378 ..

MR WHITECROSS: I think I have made my point, Mr Speaker. It is a simple point. There are differences between the two bus lanes, and just because we did it for one does not mean that we should do it for the others. We need to give priority to what the implications will be for our public transport system and ensure that we are not compromising our public transport system. To date, Mr Hird's so-called consultation with the Assembly has not yielded any actual information about that, and the Minister was not too forthcoming either, although he now says that he has the information and he just has not told us.

It comes down to this, Mr Speaker: The emphasis of policy in recent times, including in the Government's last budget, was on bus priority measures. This motion is about turning your back on bus priority measures and saying, "Let us hand over these bus priority measures to cars". If a bus priority measure is misconceived and we can make the system better for everybody by opening up the bus lanes, let the Government bring forward the information and we will contemplate that. Let us not have a situation where we compromise the effectiveness of our public transport system and its efficiency, in terms of the cost of running it, simply to satisfy the short-term gain of giving a few car drivers access to the bus lane.

MS HORODNY (11.06): The Greens will not be supporting this motion. In my view, it is a very simplistic motion. It has not been thought through adequately. A lot of the points Mr Whitecross made I would have to agree with. You cannot simply take Athllon Drive, with its unique situation of having one car lane and one bus lane, and extrapolate from that situation to other lanes. Athllon Drive is unique because it has one car lane and one bus lane, and possibly it was appropriate to do what Mr De Domenico did in that situation - although I understand that buses have been slowed up outside of peak times when cars use that lane, so there might be some problems there and they may have to be looked into. You certainly cannot take that situation and use it on Adelaide Avenue or Barry Drive, because those roads already have more than one car lane; they have two, if not three, car lanes.

Mr Hird: That is what they do everywhere else in the world.

MS HORODNY: I cannot see the need, Mr Hird, to change those bus lanes into car lanes for any time of the day. I cannot understand why this Government, which claims to have a commitment to improving public transport in the ACT, would be supporting such a motion. It does nothing to improve public transport in the ACT. In fact, it shows the clear direction of this Government to make it easier for car users in the ACT to get around. They have two lanes now; let them have three. Why not let them have five? Why not just put more lanes in and let us have more cars and fewer buses than we already have?

It is clear that this Government does not have a commitment to public transport. The new draft Bus Book shows that services have been reduced. The book is not easily comprehensible. The public consultation time given for that book was one week - one week for everyone out there in the community to comment on the changes in that book, which are fairly major. Most of the routes have been altered, and the routes after 7 o'clock have been completely altered. So that is a real issue.

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