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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 553 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

together, I may be able to come back from Madrid and report to this Assembly on some of the issues of seamless mobility that we may be able to take up and learn from.

The aim of public transport should be to provide a service to meet the criteria of sustainability and livability and to meet the need to address greenhouse emissions and the needs of our environment. We need to keep all those things in mind when we are talking about public transport. As Ms Tucker said, in building a really sustainable public transport system for the ACT, we have to build in the habits of a lifetime.

We need to have a sustainable transport policy that covers the road, the private car, the taxi, the bus, and we also must consider mass transit in terms of express services, be they bus, light rail or some of the hybrid technologies, and these must be all integrated networks and we must look at a variety of means of making sure that we actually get the system working. It will take time and it will take commitment, but it is the job of this place to ensure that in the next few years we go from a piecemeal bus service to something which is truly integrated and truly meets the needs of the people.

In about November of last year we had debate in this place, sponsored by Ms Dundas, about the way to go program, which is without a doubt one of the weapons that we should use in our armoury. The way to go program has a great deal of potential. It has been used in other places much more effectively than it has been here. At that time, I spoke about the success of the way to go program in Seattle. I think that we should revisit some of those issues.

The way to go program is about enabling people to make the smartest transport choices so that they can save money and make their communities more livable. It is very much in the same theme of those people who are concerned about conservation or recycling; it is about making your community better. You can legislate and put capital expenditure into things and you can put buses on the road, but the real problems will not be solved until you help people to learn to make smarter choices about how they travel.

Seattle went in for quite an extensive pilot of the way to go program. The research that went before the way to go program in Seattle showed that 75 per cent of all automobile trips, including 50 per cent during peak hours, were for personal and family reasons rather than travelling to or from work. With this piece of information in its armoury, it conducted a pilot with 23 families exploring the possibilities of getting along without an extra car for six weeks. As a result, at least four of the families in the trial decided to sell their second car. Many families which did not even participate in the trial, because of the support that went with the trial and the information provided, a lot of it net-based, used the information provided by the city of Seattle to find out that they would actually be a lot better off if they did sell their second cars.

All the families in the study saved money, and most saved in excess of $US64 a week. They found that they could get around on transit, by bicycling, walking and taking taxis, and all of those needs could be addressed by as little as $21 a week, which is far less than the estimated cost of running the second car, $US85 a week.

Seattle, in addition to providing people with options, provided them with information, real information, some of which we will see from the minister's research about the real cost of transport. I think that people will be quite horrified by that. The average citizen in

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