Page 1691 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 9 May 2018
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They are either too young, and we have laws about that, or they are too old, and we even have laws about that. Over age 75 you will have a medical test every year. If you are in the age group between those, even if you have the means to have your own private car, which you might not, you might have a disability. You might think that you do not feel that you are that safe a driver and you wish to not be part of the road toll or not cause anyone else to be part of the road toll. All of these are quite good reasons. Being a greenie, I could also talk about the climate change and environmental impact reasons why people might quite reasonably think they do not want to be driving a private car with one person in it but would like to take public transport and would like to see our city and our town centre not filled with parking for private cars.
I should possibly get off my hobbyhorse and stop raving so much about the big advantages of public transport, but let me just say that there are big advantages, and there are big advantages for people outside peak hours. They are really important.
I will start with the Sunday and public holiday services in terms of the evening services. When I grew up in Canberra, nothing much happened in Canberra on Sunday nights and there were not many people who used buses on Sunday nights. The services stopped at 5 pm, and that was fairly boring but possibly reflective of Canberra. As Miss Burch explained in her speech, Canberra has changed. There are things that you can do on Sunday nights apart from stay home and have a Sunday roast. Now the 5 pm to 7 pm time on Sunday is quite busy on some routes. In fact the whole weekend is quite busy on some routes. I catch the 300 bus; it is great to have the numbering the same at weekends as during the week. I catch that bus quite frequently on the weekend, and I usually find that it is at least half full.
Operating hours clearly need to be extended. In my electorate on Sundays, the last blue rapid departs the city to Woden at 7.26 pm, but there are no connecting suburban services. The last 983 departs Woden for Lyons, Wright, Coombs, Duffy and Holder at 6.30 pm and the last 921 departs Woden for Chifley, Pearce and Torrens at 5.28 pm. The last 962 departs Woden for Kambah at 6.20 and the last 934 departs Woden for Canberra Hospital, Garran and Hughes at 6.13. These are significantly earlier than the last blue rapid at 7.26, which is not really good enough.
One of the interesting pieces of information—I do not think we called for it in this motion but it would be very interesting to get it—is how much Uber is being used for the last mile or the last kilometre of service. When Uber started in Canberra, my understanding is that one of the things that they said to government was, “We expect the vast majority of our trips will be quite short. People will get the bus to their local town centre, particularly after hours on a Sunday evening or a Saturday night—they will do the main trip on the bus to Tuggeranong, Belconnen or wherever—and then just get the Uber for the last few kilometres home.” It would be really interesting to find out if, in fact, that is the sort of traffic that Uber has. We should have asked for it, but I only just realised it.
Miss Burch talked about this a bit. She talked about the Nightrider service and the service that we have at the Multicultural Festival. It is obvious that there is the need for this service, at the very least, over a quite long period of time, to get out to at least the town centres for longer periods.
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