Page 3409 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 18 September 2013
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10,000 people living in the city centre over that time frame. These are the drivers for growth that we have to respond to and why we are doing the work through a detailed planning framework set out in an overarching way through the ACT planning strategy, and in a detailed way for the city centre through the city plan and the city-to-the-lake initiatives.
City to the lake, of course, is about connecting the city with its best address, Lake Burley Griffin, and overcoming the barrier that has been put in the way of the city meeting the lake, which is of course the Parkes Way road network. This city to the lake initiative should give us great opportunity to encourage growth and investment in and around our city centre and change the way people perceive the role of the city.
I was delighted to see that the city to the lake initiative won an Australian design award, established by former Prime Minister Paul Keating. The awards go to projects that exemplify urban design excellence. It is a great endorsement of the planning work being done by this government to drive, revitalise and transform our city centre.
Transforming our city centre is not just about where buildings go and what types of uses they accommodate. It is also about improving transport connections. That is why the government is driving the capital metro project. This is about transforming travel options, about giving access to city centre amenities for people travelling from the suburbs of Gungahlin and the north side of Canberra.
As the project moves from concept and design to reality, we are planning a number of stages to bring this initiative to fruition. Initial engineering investigations and transport planning, along with further economic and financial aspects, are all currently under detailed development. The first stage of this project is a critical step in marking the commencement of the initiative and opening our city centre to people who live on the northern side of the lake.
But, of course, the government is committed not just to the north side, but to right across our city. That is why we are investing in a Canberra-wide light rail network master plan, to plan future stages of the capital metro connections. We have to recognise that whilst there will be many more people living in our city centre and along the Gungahlin-to-city corridor over the next 20 years, there will also be many, many more people working in that corridor. The estimates suggest up to a further 20,000 to 25,000 people every working day will be travelling in and out of the city centre and the corridor to and from work.
Do we seriously think that buses or the existing transport arrangements are going to meet that demand or do we have to seriously plan for our city’s future and give commuters the choices they need and deserve to enable them to move quickly and conveniently to and from their places of work and also help to reduce congestion on our roads, which will only continue to grow over time?
These are the choices and the decisions that this government is making now because we recognise without the strategic planning effort our city will be caught short and we will start to face the problems that other cities see every day: congestion, overcrowding and lack of good transport choices.
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