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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 551 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

because we will have people who do not have access to private cars seriously disadvantaged in terms of the potential for them to move around the city, and we will have all the additional health problems that come with dependence on the private motor vehicle.

This motion is about having a sustainable transport policy. The challenge for this government is to pin its colours to the mast with a growing public transport system that serves the needs of more people right across the city, not just Gungahlin, reducing our dependence on cars, on fossil fuels, on a greenhouse gas producing society, and on an increasingly congested, unworkable and unfriendly urban environment.

Light rail is a form of transport which was promised, or at least implied, when Gungahlin was just a twinkle in the NCDC's eyes and which has been championed by a wide range of public transport advocates and experts for many years. To read now in the newspapers that the minister is saying no to Gungahlin but is enthusiastically supporting a rail network for central Canberra probably reinforces the sense of exclusion experienced by many in Gungahlin.

I acknowledge that any rail network is a massive capital investment and that, if the ACT were to go with rail, it would have to begin with the most immediately viable section and look to expand over time. I am not a transport economist, but I recognise that high patronage in and around central Canberra may offer a viable starting point.

While it may be economically feasible to set up a light rail system in the city of Canberra and then expand to other town centres, that expansion will only happen when we have built a culture of public transport use and, as the minister and the rest of us have said time and again, it isn't simply a question of having rail or private cars; there are many other components to a sustainable transport system.

Now is the time to make the commitment to building the habits of expanded public transport use. If this motion is supported, the Assembly will be calling on the government to make Gungahlin the benchmark in our shift towards this culture. It is for that reason that I am specifically asking the government to explore autonomous dial-a-ride transit-ADART-systems.

This form of local public transport is presently being trialled in the US. It is a kind of minicab multiuser system that uses today's information technology to sort out efficient pick-up and drop routes for people from their street addresses. It has the potential to mesh seamlessly with express bus services and later express or light rail and to deliver, through a public system, the benefits of private and public transport. Similarly, the introduction of bus only lanes on congested roads, such as Northbourne Avenue, could offer trips into town that would bequicker, cheaper and more desirable than car trips.

With such a structure in place, if the ACT were to construct a light rail network starting in central Canberra, Gungahlin residents for once could be advantaged by that system. Not only would it be of benefit to those residents, but also it would have laid the parameters for similar investments throughout Canberra.

The minister is likely to argue that bus services in Gungahlin are up and that bus use in Gungahlin is up but, in the context of having a sustainable transport system, a lighter

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