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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1658 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General): I present the 1997-98 Purchasing Contracts between the Department of Health and Community Care and the following organisations: Calvary Hospital ACT Inc., relating to contract reporting bulletin; the Canberra Hospital, for the purchase of hospital services; and ACT Community Care, for the provision of community-based health and disability services.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (3.43): Mr Speaker, for the information of members, I present the Review of ACTION's services and I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

Mr Speaker, in February I announced a review of ACTION services to be carried out by Roger Graham and Associates. I am pleased to advise that this review is completed, and I now table the report as I promised then to do. In tabling the report, I would like to say that I believe that ACTION has done a good job in the past in delivering services to the ACT community. I would like to put some of these achievements on the record. Between 1991-92 and 1996-97 ACTION has increased the total number of kilometres travelled each year by 1.5 million but with 100 fewer buses. It has reduced operating costs from $4 a kilometre to $3 a kilometre. It has reduced its cost to the budget by $21.5m, or 43 per cent in real terms. It has increased the number of kilometres travelled by each bus from 42,300 to 59,100 and it has increased the number of passenger boardings per employee from 23,400 to 31,200 a year. It is not generally appreciated or known that ACTION carries close to 400,000 passengers each week and its buses travel a total of more than 20 million kilometres a year. That is a lot of people and a lot of kilometres, all accomplished, in my view, with an enviable safety record.

ACTION has also introduced services designed to increase patronage - services such as park and ride, three for free, and cycle and ride, with bicycle lockers at strategic locations - and they are currently trialling a bicycle rack on the front of buses to entice cyclists to use buses. Austouch terminals are also being installed at interchanges, for the convenience of passengers. In the budget the Government announced the special $1 city ride to apply to those working within three kilometres of Civic. Subject to the results of this new fare, we have plans to introduce similar fares around other town centres in the future. We also pegged ACTION bus fares at the current level.

I turn now to the Graham report. The review found that the bus network and its design are based on a range of engineering and planning policies which do not provide the flexibility to respond to, or reflect the needs of, consumers. The network design has been built around a system of interchanges. Overseas studies have shown that each time passengers change buses patronage is reduced. The Graham report recommends that the network be redesigned to provide more direct and frequent services, with through routing of services wherever possible. The redesigned network would have a number of features.

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