Page 662 - Week 03 - Thursday, 15 March 2007
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I have received, as I said, many expressions of concern about ACTION bus services. I describe some of these representations to provide for the Assembly examples of how bus route cuts have adversely affected the community. I have had complaints that bus services are overcrowded, that they are running late, or that they are insufficient in certain areas of my electorate.
For example—and I will not use names of constituents, but I am happy to make them available if there is any interest; I think the minister would have all these in more detail by way of correspondence—constituents from Isaacs have written to me expressing their concern that the cutting of bus route No 698 meant that their child would no longer be able to travel by bus from Isaacs to Mawson primary school and arrive at school on time. They have been in contact with the government since the bus route cuts last December and, although there has been some modification of arrangements, they have continued to indicate to me that they do not believe that the solution to their concerns or to this problem is in fact adequate.
The best ACTION was able to do was to reroute high school bus No 616 so that it dropped off students at Mawson primary, but this would mean that my constituents’ young child would have to be at the bus stop at 8.00 am and then be at the school from 8.30 am until classes start considerably later. This is not an adequate solution. I understand that my constituents wrote to the Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services only a few days ago to yet again plead with him to reinstate this important bus route.
Another constituent, from Forrest, who is elderly and legally blind, believes that the reduced services have severely affected and disadvantaged elderly people such as she who rely on these services as their only means of transport.
Yet another constituent, this time from Swinger Hill, who is also an elderly resident and is opposed to the ACTION bus route cuts, has written to me. When I made representations to the government on her behalf, I was informed that the decision to cut suburban routes during peak periods was due to low patron demand and that the government understood that “these changes were frustrating for commuters”. If they understand that they are frustrating for commuters, let us see whether they can get them reversed. It seems that while they were happy to effectively fob her off in January, the government obviously underestimated just how frustrating, to use their term, these bus route cuts would be for the entire Canberra community.
It is not just elderly people and schoolchildren who have been affected by these changes. A constituent from Kingston contacted my office in September last year to protest about the then proposed withdrawal of all lunchtime services of the No 40 bus route to and from Campbell Park. These bus services were designed, following direct consultation between the community and ACTION some years ago, to provide Campbell Park workers with a bus service to the city during the middle of the day so that they could run essential errands during their lunch hour if needed. However, this service was scrapped, along with all the others, and all the good cooperation between ACTION and the community to set up that service was absolutely in vain or wasted. The changes have also meant that there are fewer special use buses operating in the community.
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