Page 1198 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 9 April 2008
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indicated that the concessions for seniors would apply in off-peak times. Now, in recent times, the government has extended that so that people can use their concessions at any time—24/7. When there is a bus on their bus route, they will not be having to adjust their travelling intentions because it happens to be peak or off peak.
This particular week is Seniors Week, and, as part of Seniors Week, we are offering free bus travel to all seniors in the off-peak time. For example, I went down to Tuggeranong to represent the Chief Minister this morning at the concert for the seniors. There were about 300 to 400 people in the auditorium. It was a wonderful thing. They were entertained by the RMC band. All of those people who attended that function by bus were not charged anything for that journey as part of Seniors Week. What was the first part of the question?
DR FOSKEY: About people in wheelchairs and pushing prams.
MR HARGREAVES: I have got it. A seniors moment in Seniors Week! The wheelchair accessibility is something that we are absolutely dedicated to. Remember, every bus we buy costs between $460,000 and $480,000. That is a lot of money, but every single one we buy is wheelchair accessible. Our intention, of course, is to honour our commitment under the Discrimination Act, which is that 50 per cent of the fleet will be wheelchair accessible by the year 2012. We are at about 24 per cent at the current time.
In terms of whether there will be a wheelchair-accessible bus going down a particular street and how someone can tell, the answer to that is twofold. Any person can contact the ACTION headquarters and the ACTION hotline and say, “I’m located at this particular address. Is a wheelchair-accessible bus going to come down my route?” They will be told the answer, which will, of course, ultimately, be yes, but it may be not straight away. The government has decided to put the wheelchair-accessible buses on the intertown routes initially and then to spread them out into the suburbs, as every time we get a new bus it goes out into the suburbs. We want to have further feedback from people who are wheelchair bound, because that influences our decisions of which route will next get a new bus as it comes on. We want that feedback; we seriously want that feedback.
Also, one of the initiatives that we are looking at is our information at interchanges. This is a change which was driven by my colleague Mr Corbell in promoting public transport as an alternative mode of transport. We want the information available at interchanges to be useful to people. We are looking at the possibility of a communication box, if you like, with a push button where people at an interchange can call the hotline and say, “I want to go from here to an address. What bus route can I get on, and will it have wheelchair accessibility and will it have a bike rack on the front?” That information will be made available to them straight away.
We believe that in the customer base at the moment there are probably somewhere between 20 and 40 people in wheelchairs who use the bus system at the moment. We try to cater for those people. We do talk to people in the disability community around their needs from time to time. I am anxious to hear from anybody. If Dr Foskey has a
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