Page 222 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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MR COE: We heard the Greens today say that there are safety concerns. We heard the government say that there are safety concerns. Yet last year, the Greens voted to put in place a T2. The government foreshadowed last year that there were some potential safety concerns on Adelaide Avenue. Why does that argument have stock today but it did not have stock in November?
It is a bit inconsistent of the Greens but we are getting used to that, three years into this term. We are beginning to see that there is bit of political opportunism in the way the Greens operate. Perhaps where they live is an indicator of how they are going to vote. And that is why Belconnen gets such a raw deal when it comes to their Greens local member. If they were advocating for a T2 lane going from Lyneham into the city we might have more success, but this member for Ginninderra, who does not understand the traffic bottlenecks which occur on a daily basis on Barry Drive, simply does not understand the frustration of being caught on that road, at a near standstill, for 15 minutes every morning while you have this strip of bitumen to your left which seemingly nobody is using.
We hear people say that there are buses that use it so frequently. There are 217 buses each day that use that stretch of bitumen, according to the ACTION timetables. There are 27,000 cars which use that road on a daily basis. Here is a very practical way to reduce the number of cars, by having car pooling. We have got a bus lane and it is not working because we still have not got very high patronage for ACTION buses. So why not try something else? Why not throw a T2 into the mix? Why not? Because this government is so stubbornly behind the old busway project which they blew a fortune on that they are determined to implement that project, inch by inch, with Simon Corbell gradually getting his way on the busway project which was a failure then.
It was such a failure that they had to chuck it out, just like they chucked him out as transport minister. Yet, a bit like so many other ministers in this government, he came back. And so do the bad projects, so do the bad ideas, so does the wasteful spending, so does the hypocrisy. They come back. If this government knew the frustrations experienced by the people in cars stuck on Barry Drive each day, the frustration of seeing that bitumen down the left, which would be a great incentive to car pool, a free incentive to car pool, then this government might think differently.
They have talked about travel times and how travel times will significantly change if this were a T2. Did they significantly change when the T2 was removed from Adelaide Avenue for that week? No. There were no changes to the ACTION bus timetables. When the T2 was reintroduced because of the Canberra Liberals’ motion, did the bus timetables change? No, they did not. Did the bus timetables change three years ago when the T2 lane was introduced on Adelaide Avenue? No, they did not.
Then we had Ms Hunter say: “That is different because the bus lane on Barry Drive is entrenched. It has been very well established.” The bus lane was only finished last year. How well established is this bus lane? What it actually comes down to is perhaps how well established Ms Bresnan is in her electorate, because she is willing to look at a populism when it comes to Adelaide Avenue and turning that into a T2, willing to do a bit of populism. But because Ms Hunter is a little more confident about
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