Page 3136 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
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works and it locks the government into running fewer services on the weekend than we otherwise might. Shift allocations take place throughout the week and Transport Canberra make the best attempt to run as many services as they can. They will not cancel a service until they are certain that they cannot run it. If they cancel it on a Wednesday it will never run. They do not stop trying to fill shifts on Friday. Sunday lunchtime they are still trying to deliver as many services as they can.
Last Friday I welcomed eight new bus drivers to our ranks, with an additional 12 people in training, and 16 trainees also started their training on Friday. That continues this week. This is a solid start and reflects a key action that I have implemented since becoming the minister for transport, stepping up a rolling recruitment campaign for bus drivers, rather than the previous approach of periodic recruitment.
Transport Canberra has advised that, although it is difficult to assess due to complexities around full-time, part-time and casual driver availability, around 40 additional bus drivers would help us to improve weekend reliability but further work is required to provide certainty of driver availability on the weekend. More bus drivers will be required to be recruited, to satisfy natural attrition and support a transition back to the current level of scheduled weekend services.
I make it very clear that the intent of the ACT government and the adjustments to the frequency of the timetable are meant to be temporary in the medium term as we recruit and train more bus drivers. Under the adjusted timetable, popular elements of the new network are proposed to remain. Frequent rapid services will start early and run late. Weekend services will run on the same route and with the same number as the weekday services.
While Transport Canberra is still working on the weekend timetable adjustments, it is likely that local route bus services will run slightly less frequently, and some of them will run up to every two hours. However, the exact details of the timetable frequency adjustments are under development, in consultation with drivers, and I look forward to releasing the timetable ahead of it taking effect in September.
Once I feel confident that bus driver numbers are at a point that we can deliver more services then I will be asking Transport Canberra to incrementally improve the frequency of services. Creating new bus networks is complicated, and the government said at the introduction of network 19 that we will continually review the implementation of the new network and make tweaks where necessary. These changes are as a result of our continued review of our services.
Last week in the Assembly the government agreed to an amended motion that set out the development of an action for weekend services. I thank the Greens for their suggestion in relation to that action plan in the motion, which was agreed to. Transport Canberra is working on the action plan that will investigate a range of additional ways to improve the network experience on the weekends. As I said in the Assembly last week, we will continue to explore other options to improve the reliability of weekend services, and I look forward to providing further updates to the Assembly and the community.
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