Page 997 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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Indeed, it was very interesting for me yesterday to view the first of the 26 brand new Scania steer-tag buses that we are purchasing for the ACT fleet. It is a very significant bus and it is a major enhancement to the ACTION bus fleet. Part of the rationale for the purchase of the 100 additional and replacement buses is to ensure that we do comply with the Disability Australia standards in relation to access. We have committed to 55 per cent of the ACTION fleet being so accessible by December 2012, and we are on target to achieve that. All of the new steer-tags will, of course, be fully disability accessible.
They are great buses. For those of you who took the opportunity yesterday to have a look, the offer was there to go for a ride. They meet all of our disability access requirements. They are climate controlled. Each of the steer-tags has five CCTV cameras. There is security for the driver, with a security panel around the driver. These buses meet standards well above Australian standards in relation to emissions. It is very clean technology.
As you would expect for a large bus, they essentially begin the process of replacing our current ageing fleet of articulated buses. They take 101 passengers—essentially 50 standing and 50 seated. It is, as we replace our fleet going forward, important to acknowledge the implications for meeting Disability Australia standards in relation to accessibility. But it is also important in the context of sustainability, making our public transport more attractive and dealing in an associated way with climate change and our emissions.
As I think we all know, about a quarter of all emissions recorded or measured in the ACT are as a result of actual use of non-renewable sources for transport—in other words, oil. A quarter of all our emissions come from that source and we must deal with issues around public transport and our dependence or overdependence on the car.
This is, of course, a major issue for government. I think it is one of the continuing major significant policy issues for this government and for this Assembly to deal with—continuing to make public transport more attractive, increasing the number of Canberrans that choose not to get to work by car from around the current 10 per cent to something far greater than that.
We can only do that by continuing to ramp up our investment in public transport and in other aspects of the alternative transport modes, other than the car, that will drive the change to the targets that we set ourselves in the sustainable transport plan some five or six years ago and which we are making significant progress on. We have improved significantly since 2003-04 from 13 per cent to almost 20 per cent the number of people who get to work other than by car, and that is a very significant improvement.
MR HARGREAVES: Supplementary, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES: Chief Minister, what other measures has the government taken to achieve its sustainable transport targets?
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