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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 134 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

What are the alternatives? Ms Horodny was quick to make reference to what she called the low level of bus service available in Gungahlin. I think there are good reasons why there should be relatively underdeveloped services in Gungahlin at the moment, because Gungahlin itself is relatively undeveloped. Obviously, a population of 14,000, which is what we have in Gungahlin at the moment, would not warrant the scale of services you might get in other more established parts of Canberra. Nonetheless, let us assume that we had the resources to pump large amounts of money into the establishment of a very high level of public transport infrastructure for Gungahlin. At the present time, approximately 7 per cent to 8 per cent of the daily journeys undertaken in this city by people travelling to work or school, to shop, or whatever, are undertaken by public transport.

Let us assume that we can engineer an absolutely ingenious and brilliant public transport policy for Gungahlin, which results in a doubling of the number of people prepared to use public transport to get into and out of Gungahlin every day - and I am sure that the new Minister for Urban Services will be in a position to engineer such a policy - at the end of the day, Mr Speaker, what you would end up with is approximately 15 per cent of people using public transport, rather than 7 or 8 per cent. The other 85 per cent of people are still going to be using their cars and are still going to be creating the problems that the car usage is now generating. (Extension of time granted)

It is clear that we are still going to be creating problems for the rest of the community, which we now see emerging, because of the lack of viable ways of using cars. We are already seeing - and I assume Ms Tucker would know from dealing with her own constituents - the very severe problems of rat-running through North Canberra. This is with only 14,000 people in Gungahlin. What happens when the population trebles or quadruples? If we get a significant portion of those people into other means of transport or working in Gungahlin itself, we are still going to have a massively increased pressure on areas around Northbourne Avenue, as people try to find ways to work that do not mean using an already heavily congested Northbourne Avenue. I believe it is simply not logical to suggest, without very firm evidence at least, that public transport is going to solve the problem, by itself at least.

Ms Horodny makes reference in the motion to the public transport options study which is referred to as being necessary to be completed before a decision can be made on a road. Let me say, first of all, that the public transport options study was, in fact, a series of studies and tended to be a series of studies which resulted in the development over a long period of time of enhanced public transport actions into Gungahlin. Stage 2 of the report was brought down in July 1993, I assume to Mr Wood. I assume he was the Minister responsible. Perhaps it was to Mr Connolly, as Minister for Urban Services - I am not sure - at that stage. I quote from that report:

There are also a number of uncertainties about the potential to adopt a more public transport oriented approach for Gungahlin. That is an approach which might lead to a lower demand for construction of the major access roads. They include:

(1) The achievement of the necessary level of public transport use would require a revolutionary change in travel behaviour on the part of the Gungahlin population.

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