Page 476 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I have said this to people at the airport. I think they have done an incredible job out there. They have been incredibly entrepreneurial and they have operated within the rules that are available to them. I think they deserve credit for building buildings that are of a high quality, that have strong environmental performance, that are architecturally interesting and that create I think quite a pleasing environment at the airport, a pleasing urban fabric.
That said, and I have again said this directly to the owners and developers of the airport, if they had done that at Gungahlin I would be their biggest fan in Canberra. I think that what has happened at the airport in creating a new precinct out there has distorted the planning of this city. It has led to a situation where we have got what is essentially evolving as a town centre in a place that was never intended to be a town centre for which the infrastructure, such as roads or public transport, is not available.
A shopping centre has been created that requires people to drive to it. It is the only way to get there. People are not going to cycle to Majura Park. They are certainly not going to walk there. There is very limited public transport. So you are building in a dependence on the private motor vehicle in a way that I think is unsustainable in the long run and compares far less favourably to some of the other developments that are occurring. If you think about the way that Gungahlin has been done, where so many of the suburbs and many residents are directly in the Gungahlin town centre area. They have a much more convenient lifestyle in that regard, and I think a more sustainable lifestyle in the long run.
So I do wish that the owners of the airport had built their very excellent developments somewhere else in this city. I think that that would have been very beneficial. We think about the way we have often debated in this Assembly the need for more employment opportunities in Gungahlin. I think that rather than people having to make the trip to the airport, it would have been better if those new office developments, as good as they are, had been placed somewhere else.
On the issue of the Majura parkway, as I have said before, Majura parkway will undoubtedly have benefits in the assistance it gives to road freight. It will also open up faster travel time for cars moving on this corridor, certainly at least in the short term. But there are also, again, long-term questions about how we want our city to grow, how it is planned and the type of transport modes we want to encourage.
That brings me to think about the definition of, and the idea of, induced or generated traffic. I have dug up through research this quotation on what that means:
Traffic congestion tends to maintain equilibrium. Congestion reaches a point at which it constrains further growth in peak period trips. If road capacity increases, the number of peak period trips also increases until congestion again limits further traffic growth. The additional traffic is called generated traffic. Generated traffic consists of diverted traffic (trips shifted in time, route and destination) and induced vehicle travel (shifts from other modes, longer trips, and new vehicle trips).
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video