Page 1277 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
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where they want to go when the timetable says it will. I think we can all agree that we want more Canberrans to be using public transport. There are many economic, environmental and health benefits associated with better public transport solutions, not least being a reduction in traffic congestion on our roads. The recent TomTom index report found that traffic congestion costs Canberra almost $4 million a year in lost time and productivity, with the average driver spending an extra 21 minutes a day on our roads.
The more confidence people have in public transport, the more likely they are to use it. The more people who use public transport, the fewer cars we have clogging up the roads. We want to avoid Canberrans having to crawl through traffic and gridlocked roads in the mornings, and reliable public transport is crucial in achieving this. But many Canberrans who choose not to use our public transport network do so not because they do not want to travel by public transport but because they feel that they cannot trust the system to get them to where they need to go, when they need to be there. Reliability is key to an efficient network.
Canberrans are worried about buses running too late and too early. They are worried that relying on a bus might mean they are late for work, late for a job interview, late for an important meeting, late for university or late for school. Late school buses, in particular, are making life difficult for parents, teachers, and of course, our children.
Transport Canberra has told parents that they do not consider a bus to be late unless it has arrived more than ten minutes after its scheduled arrival time. This is not a view shared by our schools. If a child arrives to school two minutes after the bell, they are still late for school, and they are marked on the roll as being late. This is frustrating for teachers, who want to start their classes with all of their students present. It is frustrating and embarrassing for our children who are being marked as late and exposed to school disciplinary procedures through no fault of their own. It is frustrating for parents, who are being contacted by schools to let them know that their children were late to school yet again.
The government wants to encourage more children to partake in active travel to and from school, but there is very little incentive to catch a bus if you are then disciplined when the bus does not arrive on time. We have an obligation to ensure that our children get to school on time ready to learn. It is not acceptable for our children to be late for school. It is not acceptable for dedicated school bus services to be arriving at schools after the bell has already rung to start the school day. And it is certainly not acceptable for transport administrators to be telling parents that if the bus arrives after the bell is not actually late.
Even worse, some of these dedicated school bus services are not scheduled to coincide with the school day. It is bad enough when school buses arrive late in the morning, but school children, parents, and teachers also have to contend with buses that leave before the end of the school day or too long after it.
Some students have to leave classes early to catch buses that leave before the last bell. This causes significant disruption to afternoon classes, not only for the students who have to leave but also for those students who remain in class after their classmates
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