Page 2954 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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people can access good public transport and can cycle and walk where possible and appropriate. It is not about forcing everyone out of their cars, and this is a simplistic and stupid argument from those opposite when they continue to assert it.
The development of light rail in Canberra is absolutely critical to providing people with real transport choices. We need, as a city, to think differently about public transport. We need to give people a real, meaningful choice that is going to attract them out of using their cars and allow them to use a frequent, rapid, reliable, high-quality, world-class public transport system. Light rail is the first step towards achieving that.
Canberra is in fact designed for effective public transport provision. It is not a city designed for the car. Its multiple centres are designed to be connected by frequent and rapid services along the centre’s corridors. The bus service will continue to play a critical role in supporting the operation of that rapid corridor service provision. This is not about light rail or buses. It is about light rail and buses. It is about effective integration. It is about making sure they work together.
Why has the government chosen the Northbourne Avenue corridor? The Northbourne Avenue corridor, the Gungahlin to city corridor, has long been identified as a key corridor for rapid transit infrastructure investments. It was identified as long ago as the early 1990s with the Gungahlin external travel study undertaken by the then federal parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital. When they were looking at the transport issues that would arise as a result of the development of the Gungahlin district, which of course had not been developed at that time, they concluded that decisions such as the development of what was then called the John Denman Parkway, and which is now called Gungahlin Drive extension, could not proceed until decisions had been taken to improve other transport modes to try to manage demand arising from the development of the Gungahlin district. In particular, they talked about the need to provide better public transport between Gungahlin and the city. The history of that corridor goes right back to the early 1990s as a corridor for priority.
Since that time there have been repeated and numerous studies that have all identified this corridor as a priority corridor. We know that if we are to invest in the significant way the government is proposing in relation to capital metro then it is not just about public transport provision. It is also about enabling significant consolidation and development along the corridor so that as many people as possible can live close to this excellent level of transport service that is going to be provided.
Northbourne Avenue, for the past two decades, has been developed as a corridor with high density along its length. It has been a deliberate and explicit planning policy of consecutive territory governments. Why has it been done? It has been done because it has been recognised that at some point a territory government will need to make the decision to provide rapid transit along that corridor.
In investing in capital metro along this corridor, we are putting A and B together. We are putting together the already existing consolidation along the corridor, along with the potential for further urban consolidation and development, and the rapid transit
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