Page 5333 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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context as well. The government must answer this question: are car trips being replaced by sustainable travel? If bike trips replace public transport trips, that is not really a help. Nor is it a help if bike trips replace pedestrian travel. We need to displace car travel, otherwise we get high cycling rates but also high driving rates. That is the case already.
So what is actually changing through the sustainable transport plan? Here are some quotes from another plan—ACT Labor’s policy platform:
ACT Labor is preparing for the future. ACT Labor has … made it easier … to travel by road … We’re investing massively in road infrastructure.
Consistent with this, the government has provided record funding for roads from the ACT budget. They broke the funding record in 2008-09, then it broke that record again in 2009-10. These figures look interesting in a pie chart. When comparing them to the funding for pedestrian cycling infrastructure, one sees they get a tiny slither of the pie. This all happens at the exact time that we need to make an incredible modal shift in transport use. Some 23 per cent of the ACT’s total emissions are produced by the transport sector, and they are increasing. In 2006 the ACT’s transport emissions were 25 per cent higher than 1990 levels and 10.5 per cent higher than 2000 levels. You cannot promise to invest massively in roads and at the same time have a revolution in Canberra’s transport patterns. It cannot be both ways.
One of the lessons from cities around the world where cyclists and walkers have reclaimed streets is that you need some sticks as well as carrots. There need to be some restrictions on use of road space by cars rather than just endlessly accommodating more and more cars. The Canadian city of Ottawa is an example. It has high cycling, walking and public transport rates but also low car travel rates. Its sustainable transport success began from the 1970s when it started cancelling most of its freeways. This is not something anyone has been willing to look at here.
We know that all this road investment from the government is inconsistent with a sustainable transport future. Fortunately, I can quote the government’s own light rail submission as evidence of this. The submission says:
Canberra’s existing transport system is not sustainable from an environmental, economic and social perspective and is already imposing significant costs on the ACT economy and society.
It goes on to make this explicit point:
More road capacity … cannot reduce carbon emissions. Reduced congestion encourages greater car use and greater carbon emissions and will not make Canberra transport more sustainable in environmental terms.
The Greens say that it is time for the ACT to go on a road diet. We need a modal shift in transport. It is effectively a type of greenwash—which we see a lot from this greener-than-Greens government—to claim that cycling or walking is increasing but at the same time to continue to encourage growing motor vehicle use.
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