Page 2292 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Professor Barbara Norman, who is the Foundation Chair of Urban and Regional Planning and a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute in the UK, co-authored an article, along with Professor Tony McMichael, who is a Professor Emeritus of Population Health at the ANU, along with Professor Peter Newman, a distinguished Professor of Sustainability from Curtin University and a world-leading academic on transport planning in cities, and along with Professor Will Steffen, who of course is from the ANU and is one of the lead contributors to the IPCC report into climate change.
These four distinguished academics came out in the last two weeks, co-authoring an independent piece in the Canberra Times explaining why this project was critical and important for our city. They started off by making the observation that Canberra has the highest per capita use of the private motor vehicle of any city in the country. They went on to highlight that the development of the capital metro project stage 1, from Gungahlin to the city, was the key foundation stone in setting the framework for a broader city-wide network for light rail. They highlighted that light rail attracts people out of their private motor vehicles in a way that bus networks do not, and they highlighted the significant public health benefits as well as the significant sustainability benefits of the project for the broader population.
We hear, of course, the parochial and narrow-minded view of those opposite that this only benefits a small proportion of the population and that it has no broader benefits. The obvious observation to make about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, is that it is not just public transport users that win when you give public transport priority. It is everyone else, first and foremost, that uses transport along this corridor, from Gungahlin to the city. It means everyone who commutes along that corridor, it means everyone who cycles along that corridor, it means everyone who uses that corridor for their daily journeys, benefits if congestion is reduced along that corridor.
So to suggest that the only beneficiaries are the light rail users is false and misleading. It is misleading because, of course, everyone benefits when congestion is reduced, and congestion is reduced and travel times are improved for all if you invest in good public transport.
Of course, Canberrans understand these arguments. They understand that there is a partisan political campaign underway from a party that have no vision for public transport in our city. Indeed their only policy at the last election when it came to transport was to build more car parks. That was their only policy at the last election—thousands more car parks, if I recall the phrasing correctly.
Canberrans reject this approach. The recent surveys undertaken by Capital Metro concluded that 55 per cent of Canberrans support the government’s plans to develop the capital metro project. And that support is not just in the inner north. It is in Gungahlin, it is in Belconnen, it is in Tuggeranong, it is in Woden, and it is in Weston Creek.
Of course, the Liberals, whenever they do not like a poll result, suggest that it is push polling. But if they want to say that, I suggest they take that up with the reputable
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