Page 2923 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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I do not always agree with Miss Burch and the Liberal Party on transport, but I agree 100 per cent with her original motion. I think my amendment and Minister Steel’s amendment take it further; they give it more oomph and there is more possibility of immediate change. I totally agree, as everyone in the Assembly clearly does, that the high levels of weekend bus service cancellations are unacceptable.
I am really glad that she has moved this motion this week, because it gives us a chance to be part of getting this fixed. I am putting forward an amendment, but the amendment is not designed to take away at all from what Miss Burch is trying to achieve. In fact I am trying to build on her work and go further.
Let me first talk a little bit about the problem, for the benefit of those members who are not weekend bus users; possibly, they are not bus users at all. In the 3½ months since network 19 was introduced and weekday routes were extended to weekends, we have seen not only higher levels of weekend bus use but also high levels of cancellations every weekend. I understand that the level of cancellations is possibly getting worse. I believe that it is currently averaging slightly over 10 per cent of services, but on one weekend it was up to 20 per cent of services. Clearly, that is unacceptable.
People are getting angry and frustrated. Unfortunately, entire routes are actually being cancelled, as well as occasional services on most other routes. I am lucky; I catch the R4, one of the more popular routes. We do not have nearly as many problems, because there is still 15-minute frequency. Most other bus routes are not like that; on many suburban routes you have to wait an hour for the next bus. I suspect that many people give up and go home. Once you have done that a few times—you have made plans to use the bus and it is not there—you are going to give up.
People are getting angry and frustrated, and that is what Miss Burch’s timely motion reflects. Most people are reasonable. They understand that while we have a bus system that tries for 100 per cent reliability, that is not in fact a possible outcome. There will always be some accidents and glitches. But weekend after weekend we are having more and more of them, with no end in sight. We want action—they want action—and we want it soon; otherwise the pleasing figures that Minister Steel cited for increased bus use will no longer be the case because people will say, “The buses don’t actually turn up and we’re not going to even try.” Weekend bus use, as my amendment says, has gone up from over 12,000 a year ago to nearly 17,000 during this year. It is an appreciable increase, and we should be celebrating this.
One of the issues is that it is really hard to find out if your bus has been cancelled. The Transport Canberra website advises passengers to call 131710 or check the NXTBUS website 90 minutes before travel. But 131710 does not know on Friday night, and it does not open until 9 am on Saturday morning, which makes it significantly useless for people trying to check something before that.
Also, checking NXTBUS less than 90 minutes before you travel is not helpful for many people because it means that they cannot plan ahead; they cannot be sure that they will actually be able to do what they want to do. That is not good enough. I am
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