Page 241 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 2018
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The ACT has one of the highest participation rates of active travel amongst major Australian cities and we are among the leading cycle-friendly cities. Indeed, we aim to be the most cycle-friendly city in the country. This year we will continue to upgrade and enhance our suburban community path network and invest in the age-friendly suburbs program.
We know a significant proportion of our community is interested but concerned about riding bikes in our city. We want to demonstrate that cycling is safe and fun and show people how they can move around our city on their bikes. We want to bring new people to the joys and benefits of cycling by giving them the confidence through good infrastructure, improved facilities and better way-finding and signage. This will also be an important part of our transport for Canberra update. We will start work on the Belconnen bikeway, demonstrating our commitment to the next generation of active travel infrastructure.
I will continue a strong focus on encouraging more kids to walk or ride to school and giving parents the confidence that it is safe, easy and fun. This focus will help relieve some of the pressures at the school gate and reduce car park congestion. We also know that walking or riding has added benefits, including improving kids’ health and wellbeing, helping them stay fit and setting them up for a more productive day at school.
To achieve all this, just one of the initiatives we have recently introduced is our election commitment of school crossing supervisors. This has started at 20 crossings around the city and has already had extremely positive feedback after just two weeks. The active streets for schools program complements the supervisors and is being delivered at 25 schools in the ACT, with an extra 50 to be rolled out. This includes infrastructure improvements, such as better footpath connections, new pram ramps and the relocation of bike storage facilities and, of course, the wonderful teardrop signage on a number of paths showing a safe route to school.
The appearance of our city is also extremely important to the government. We have some improvements to make as our city grows and we strike the right balance between our newer and more established suburbs. The better suburbs program was launched last year, with extensive community consultation, and we will deliver a finalised better suburbs statement this year after some exciting community engagement and collaboration planned for April. This will build on our investments in our vital town centres, with work underway in Gungahlin, Belconnen and Tuggeranong, as well as planning for works in Woden and a number of our group centres, notably this year in Kambah.
TCCS will also work closely with the City Renewal Authority on their exciting new vision for renewal of the centre of our city. This is important work to complement the vision of the government and the community often expressed through master planning documents. There are currently five road duplication projects underway across the city, responding to the growth of new development areas in Molonglo and north Gungahlin as well as growth in Tuggeranong, and I look forward to each of these reaching completion and/or progressing new stages soon.
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