Page 695 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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William Hovell Drive is one of the main distributing roads to west Belconnen and is very important in my electorate. It is of great personal interest to me and to my constituents that the future of William Hovell Drive is investigated. We see on every weekday morning various parts of William Hovell Drive that are still single lane turn into one of the longest car parks in my electorate. And my electorate deserves better than this. My community deserves so much more, especially in light of the neglect and the inconvenience that they have experienced during the building of the GDE.
The finalisation of the GDE does not solve the problems for the people of west Belconnen who use William Hovell Drive. William Hovell Drive where it meets Parkes Way is now further congested because of the inappropriate and insufficient exits off the GDE and off the parkway, where all of these places meet and become Parkes Way.
There is congestion every day on this already busy road. As a constituent said to me today, one only needs to stand at the corner of Kingsford Smith Drive and Drake Brockman Drive between half past seven and half past eight any morning of the week and they will observe traffic backing up to Belconnen Way. This creates almost a static car park for the best part of 90 minutes every weekday, but my constituent points out that for some reason it is worse on a Tuesday. It is, as they continue, a test for all the doubters that traffic at this particular intersection could get that bad.
This motion before us today is a simple, straightforward one, asking the government for some analysis. (Quorum formed) At least the quorum call did manage to get the Labor members for Ginninderra to come and participate. As I was saying before, this motion is a straightforward one which calls on the government to provide to the Assembly by close of business tomorrow any information they currently they have about the usage of William Hovell Drive and then by the first sitting day in May to conduct some further research into road usage and to provide analysis to the Assembly on the basis of that road usage and a statement of strategies that the government intends to adopt to alleviate the peak load on William Hovell Drive.
I noticed during the quorum call that the minister has circulated some amendments that indicate that there is some work that has already been done recently in November on William Hovell Drive and that it may be that the work that is already done is sufficient.
The problem with William Hovell Drive, as I have said, is that the duplication that was done by the Stanhope government—I think in 2003, but I stand corrected—was poorly done. I recall that the Minister for Planning at the time was Minister Corbell and that he bemoaned the fact that some trees had to be cut out to duplicate William Hovell Drive. But he does not seem to bemoan the fact that he did not get it right the first time. His record on transport planning, and the delivery of roads in the light of the GDE, does not leave me surprised that we ended up with a bad situation as a result of the work that has already been done.
Instead of spending money on vanity projects and on art on the side of the road, I think the people of west Belconnen would be better off with a few more hundred metres of bitumen in places where they have choke points.
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