Page 2449 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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We have heard that passenger numbers are declining, and this is despite the much-touted Redex service. This financial year we will have 1.33 million fewer passengers than expected. This translates into a shortfall of 7.9 per cent in terms of the expected number of people using buses as a mode of transport. So where is our modern transport system and where is our environmentally-aware transport system? This performance also means that fares, as a percentage of the cost of ACTION, are on the decline. Therefore, the cost per passenger is on the increase. In 2008-09 the cost was $5.43 per bus ride. Now it has gone up to $6.30 per bus ride, an increase of 16 per cent.
We have heard of a churn of senior managers in recent years, and that the real control of ACTION has been handed over to the Transport Workers Union. Through a question on notice asked by my colleague Mr Coe, we know that empty ACTION buses cost the ACT taxpayer more than $30,000 every single day, which translates to $7.8 million each and every year, and that is a growing number. In this context, we have also heard of dead running, that is empty buses, travelling over 1,200 kilometres every weekday. This translates to 3,120,000 kilometres every year.
Mr Coe: 12,000.
MRS DUNNE: 3,112,000 is it? I will have to speak—
Mr Coe: 12,000 per weekday.
MRS DUNNE: 12,000 per weekday; 3,120,00 kilometres every year. Is that right?
Mr Coe: Correct.
MRS DUNNE: This means an empty ACTION bus travels the equivalent of 78 times around the earth’s equator every year, or one and a half times every week. Just like the inefficiency of Mr Stanhope’s ACTION bus network, it took him more than 100 days to answer that question from Mr Coe. On the day he released the answer, he also issued a media release announcing that he was going to take action to reduce dead running. He was only taking that action because the Canberra Liberals, through our representative Mr Coe, asked the question and therefore shamed him into it.
We have heard about the accidents. In 2008, there were 292 accidents. But in 2009 that increased dramatically by almost 80 per cent to 524 accidents. Mr Stanhope’s excuse for this was that in 2008 ACTION had not been recording minor incidents that occurred in bus depots. This means that there were 232 accidents occurring in the bus depots as buses were being parked or driven out, perhaps on one of those dead runs.
But that is only the icing on the cake of the failure of the ACT Labor government and this Chief Minister in relation to ACTION. Tomorrow, the people of the ACT are going to be put to a huge amount of inconvenience because of the industrial dispute which this Chief Minister cannot or will not fix. Tomorrow morning, hundreds of thousands of Canberrans who normally commute to work on buses, who would go to medical appointments on buses, who go to school on buses, will not be able to do so.
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