Page 3165 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 2013
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be parking, whether it be cleaning graffiti, whether it be cutting grass or whether it be all the basic things we often take for granted when they are going well but which come to our attention when they are not going well.
Yet again, Roads ACT has failed to reach its target for the percentage of roads resurfaced in the past year. Like so many years, this shortfall has been blamed on wet weather. It is interesting that whilst, once again, they have fallen short by 25 per cent, this time blamed on wet weather, in the years of drought they also fell short by 25 per cent. That was not blamed on wet weather; it was just blamed on a very complex program. The time may well come for the ACT government through the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services to revisit that target of four per cent of territory roads to be resurfaced. In my five years here and in the annual reports of the then urban services and now TAMS that I have looked back through as well as the budgets I do not think I have seen a single year where that target has been met. So I ask the minister to look at whether that four per cent target is reasonable.
A huge portion of TAMS is, of course, ACTION buses. The subsidy for ACTION buses has gone up to $111 million for 2013-14, or $3,500 for every bus user. So much work needs to be done in this space, and I hope the focus we are currently seeing on capital metro does not detract from the focus that should be on ACTION buses. Some of Canberra’s most vulnerable people depend on ACTION buses. Of course, some people choose to ride ACTION buses. I think there are relatively few people who choose to ride ACTION buses, but there are certainly a lot of people who are forced to ride ACTION buses. That is reflected in the fact that only eight per cent of Canberrans ride ACTION buses on a regular basis. It is for that reason we are seeing the cost per passenger now at $7.04, which is a huge sum. The opposition is not advocating cutting that budget; we are advocating working on strategies to get more people on to buses which will, of course, bring that figure down as the numerator changes—that is, the ratio of passengers to the population.
At 16 per cent, the proportion of revenue which comes from ticket sales is just too low. It is all very well for the Greens and the Labor Party to talk about sustainability in public transport, but sustainability also extends to economic sustainability. With a subsidy of 84 per cent, you wonder how sustainable ACTION buses really are.
Patronage on ACTION buses was lower than expected. It is not surprising that Canberrans are choosing not to catch ACTION buses as they continue to fall short on their targets for running on time. Last year only 70 per cent of bus services operated on the scheduled time, according to the budget.
The MyWay system, which was delivered years later than promised, is not proving as helpful as the government promised. During the estimates hearing I asked the minister for information about the average passenger journey distance. After agreeing to take this question on notice, the minister responded:
Passenger travel distances are not easily available from the MyWay system and given the resource cost involved in collecting the data, and the limited usefulness of this data to ACTION, I am not prepared to answer this particular request at this point.
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