Page 2137 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 8 May 2012
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of Gungahlin moving south when that road is complete. That is a massive project—$288 million—and it is going to be a project that this economy needs because we are going to face a couple of very difficult years, I expect, and big projects in the civil area like that will be very much needed.
The ACT government, of course, are going through our own budget priorities now and looking at the investments we need to make. Some of those investments will cover roads, but I can also foreshadow that we will be looking at active living as part of any response to this. It cannot simply be a question about roads. It has to be around changing our own behaviour, looking at improvements to public transport and looking at encouraging more people onto bikes and, for those who live within five kilometres of their workplace, encouraging alternatives to the car.
We will continue to invest heavily in roads. As I said, they are a significant part of the ACT government’s asset base. I think TAMS do an incredible job. They spend $10 million a year on resurfacing roads, $5 million on the stormwater network, $6 million on street lights and over $4 million on maintaining footpaths and cycle paths. So it is a big effort there.
In relation to the Parkes Way tunnel, the issue of lighting has been raised. The Parkes Way tunnel is going to undergo a facelift. There are some issues around asbestos management which have required careful consideration. You cannot just go in there and whack in a few more fluoro lights, no matter how simple Mr Seselja would like to make it sound. That is under active management. We are not going to endanger anybody by putting them through that job without having a full understanding of what some of those issues around asbestos management are going to be and also how we manage that from a driver disruption point of view.
In response to the issue that I think Ms Le Couteur raised in question time last week around temporary traffic management strategies and whether or not we could provide more information to the community about that, I have had a look at that. There are about 2,000 temporary traffic management plans done in a year. What we will need to do, if we are going to make more information about that available online, is to have a look at some prioritisation within that 2,000.
The government welcome the opportunity to talk about the road network in the ACT. The issues are not as simple as some would have you believe and the solutions going forward cannot just be about roads. They need to take into consideration other transport initiatives which we have outlined in transport for Canberra.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (3.32): I thank Mr Seselja for bringing this matter of public importance to the Assembly today. Of course, it was less than a year ago that Mr Seselja presented another matter of public importance to the Assembly on the same issue. That MPI was the importance of timely delivery of roads infrastructure. In May last year, of course, Mr Coe moved a motion in the Assembly about the GDE. Since then the Liberals have also moved three motions on car parking: one on Barry Drive, one on Majura Parkway and one on William Hovell Drive.
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