Page 1292 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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new directorate, to be called Transport Canberra and City Services, will have a clear focus on helping Canberra remain the world’s most livable city.
As Canberra approaches a population of 500,000 people, it is crucial we do more to ensure that our transport network and our city services keep up with demand and growth. We know that congestion may soon cripple our city. The cost of congestion around Canberra will reach $700 million by 2030 if we keep going the way we are.
Northbourne Avenue is a particular issue. According to a recent Infrastructure Australia audit, Canberra’s main corridor into the city is the most expensive road in the ACT with delays costing $430,000 per lane kilometre in 2011 alone, with a predicted increase to $1.1 million by 2031. Bringing together Transport Canberra with the team that delivers our city services makes sense and will go a long way to managing Canberra’s growth and creating an even more livable city.
From 1 July, Transport Canberra and City Services will focus on the customer experience, delivering high quality local and transport services with a focus on innovation and business improvement. It will be led by Emma Thomas, previously announced as the director-general of the transport Canberra agency.
There are many synergies between TAMS and transport Canberra, and by aligning light rail, ACTION buses and active travel with our roads, community paths, traffic management and our other key city services—our wonderful libraries, our recycling and waste management teams and other business enterprises—we will create a directorate that is even more focused on the infrastructure and local service needs of our growing city.
As we all know, TAMS do an incredible job keeping our city running. Each day our TAMS staff are out there helping our community, keeping us safe, helping us learn and ensuring that we can take pride in our beautiful national capital. I am proud that we will see the ACTION team continue their great work alongside other TAMS staff within the transport Canberra agency.
The staff across all these teams reach out to Canberrans every day: fixing our roads and footpaths, working in our public transport system, at our libraries, cleaning our shopping centres, looking after our street trees, our public spaces and playgrounds. They mow our verges, collect our rubbish and innovate in service delivery, as seen this week with the arrival of the innovative social enterprise Soft Landing.
Every day they engage with Canberrans directly or through the local media on improving our city. They do a great job and they know this city like very few do. I am very pleased to have been able to bring these two services together to have an even greater focus on these efforts to service the Canberra community.
I think by refocusing these services on our local environment and how we move around Canberra, we can better ensure our communities are connected, while continuing to develop the great character that is innate to all our town centres.
I was sad to see Gary Byles announce his retirement from TAMS after nearly nine years as the director-general last month. He indicated this intention to me when I
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