Page 1749 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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Schools like Brindabella Christian College have been severely disadvantaged under the new transport network. Despite taking in students from across the territory, Brindabella Christian College had 17 dedicated services cut to just three, with one of these services terminating at the Belconnen interchange, leaving students with no option but to change buses. This network has been far from a great success for the students at Brindabella Christian College.
What I find confusing about the minister’s optimism about the new network is that in October last year the ACT government released their school bus services policy, and one of the principles that the network continues to violate states:
Active travel is not a viable option for students living longer distances from their school, or for students who cannot safely walk or cycle to school because of their age, degree of independence or access to an appropriate route or school.
Over the past two weeks I have been out and about chatting to parents across the territory, listening to cases where the network that the minister claims has been a great success violates this very principle. An example that is particularly notable is that of Holy Family Primary School in Gowrie. As per the Transport Canberra website, Holy Family Primary School is served by one dedicated school bus which travels through Monash and Gowrie, with the alternative being a public bus stop located 200 metres away from the school gates. Under the new network, the minister would have primary school students undertake a 4½-minute walk to a bus stop down the road when there is a bus stop located just 200 metres away from the school gates.
This scenario is so much worse for the 41 primary schools who have lost all their dedicated services as the minister thinks that children aged six and seven years are classified as independent enough to walk further to safely access public buses. Children at St Vincent’s Primary are another example. They must now leave school 15 minutes earlier than normal finishing time just to get home safely at a reasonable hour and avoid long waits at the public bus stop. According to a Canberra Times article dated 1 May, this would mean that over the course of a year these children would lose up to nine days and 50 hours of school time. Because of Minister Fitzharris’s decision, students are now being educationally disadvantaged by choosing to use public transport to get to and from school.
The implication from many in the Labor Party seems to be that if children attend their local public school they can simply walk to school. However public schools are also significantly affected by these changes. Children who live at the Causeway and attend their local public primary school, Red Hill, no longer have a dedicated school bus. In fact, Minister Fitzharris’s expedition planner recommends anything from a 23 to 32-minute walk and a bus ride or a 57-minute walk, 4.1 kilometres, to get to and from school. That is more than an eight-kilometre round trip each day for primary school children.
Adding insult to injury, Transport Canberra has refused to move the crossing guards closer to the new bus stop for those children at Red Hill who still have a bus to catch, meaning that children as young as five are forced to cross La Perouse Street. Before
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