Page 1209 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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project has not been properly scoped and worked through when it is exactly the opposite. This project is subject to a level of rigour and assessment which is appropriate for a project of this complexity and magnitude, both financially and technically. The model for the estimation of costs is extremely detailed and provides clarity on all aspects of day-to-day operation.
A challenge review is planned to test assumptions and benchmarking used in the model and so secure further certainty around the operational and whole-of-life costs of the light rail service. This will help us as a community to further refine both the actual cost and any contingency necessary to be incorporated at this point in time. The government, through capital metro, will also undertake market benchmarking to ensure that the costs associated with the project are broadly consistent with those elsewhere and that, where appropriate, differences have been accounted for.
Areas where there is the potential for early works and de-risking of the project prior to going to market are also being identified, and a potential program of these works is being further refined. This, again, gives us greater capacity to finalise and have confidence in relation to the cost estimates. So this project is making a very significant impact on how people view and think about this corridor. This agency, the Capital Metro Agency, is undertaking the work and the analysis needed to make it happen.
But I think the most important thing to stress is that, in the Liberal Party’s world, their view, as the city heads towards half a million people, is that buses will do the job. Mr Coe seems to think that buses along Northbourne, mixed with general traffic, are going to be the solution to the public transport need along the city to Gungahlin corridor. He thinks it is all right. He thinks it is all right for people to continue to catch the bus and be held up in general traffic, with no priority along the corridor, delaying both bus travel and motorists. It is just not good enough.
It might suit his car-centric view of the world that the best solution to the transport task in our city is the continuing use of the private motor vehicle, but what he is doing by continuing to adopt that approach—just build more car parks, just build more lanes on roads; that will fix the problem—will not fix the problem. We need more people catching public transport. We need to reduce the cost to our community associated with the expansion and the adding of road infrastructure to our city and the continued reliance on large levels of surface car parking to meet that demand.
We have to make a shift as a city. We have to shift away from our reliance on the private motor vehicle. The private motor vehicle will continue to play a critical role in the transport task for our city. But we need to reduce the need for people to pay to have a three or four-car household because there is no alternative. And we know this is increasingly common. If mum has a car, dad has a car and the teenager gets a car—if there are two teenagers in the house maybe they both get a car—those costs add up. Those costs add up on household budgets. Fuel costs, purchase costs, maintenance costs, registration and insurance costs—they all add up.
In addition, we see fewer people walking; we see fewer people cycling; we see fewer people on the street. And we know what the impacts are of sedentary transport. Obesity, less activity in our community, the public health benefits that come from
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