Page 3374 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
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per cent increase in patronage. Saturdays were up 65 per cent in services and Sundays were up 77 per cent in services.
While I have criticised the minister for not having reliable bus services, I think I have said at least once before that I am very pleased that the ACT government had the courage to try to introduce a vastly better weekend service than had been there before. I am hoping that it will go from 89 per cent reliability to 99. I think their target is only 95 per cent, but there is still hope for 99 per cent. I am hoping it will become more reliable, but I do very much applaud the government for the ambition of trying to give Canberra at last a viable bus service at the weekend.
The interesting thing is that places where services have gone up have come at the cost of services to other areas. I was also rereading some of the estimates discussion when I was getting organised for this. In the estimates hearing Mr Duncan Edghill many, many times said the words “tough decision”—tough decision in terms of the trade-offs. He said:
That invariably means that there will be changes for some people and other people win. What is the ultimate measure? The ultimate measure is patronage, and we have been delighted with the outcomes from the new network.
I have to say that that is incredibly cold comfort to people outside of the privileged light rail area, because outside of that area patronage has gone down, apart from Molonglo and Weston. We have got three big areas, Woden, Belconnen, and Tuggeranong, where patronage has gone down.
One of the reasons for the problem is that we have totally changed how our network works. Instead of having buses that start somewhere in the suburbs and wander their way—to Civic principally—to somewhere you want to get to, we have finally implemented a hub and spoke methodology, which has been talked about for many years but not implemented before now. I suspect that in the long run this is actually what we need to do. That is for the rapid services, but we also have to maintain a viable service for the people for whom the rapids do not work, the people who are not living over in the hubs or on the spokes, which after all means an awful lot of our suburban areas. Under the old network we were 1.31 boardings per journey and at the moment, according to estimates, we are at 1.36 or 1.37 boardings per journey.
Mr Parton was talking about a lady who was having real problems visiting her husband’s grave. Apart from the 2.2-kilometre walk, which I agree is unreasonable, she also had an unreasonable number of transfers. Transfers make your trip take longer. Transfers also make a trip take longer in your mind. It is one thing to get on a bus and settle down with a book or your iPhone until your destination. It might take 40 minutes—and I would happier if it did not take 40 minutes—but at least that is all I have got to do. But if you have to take one bus that takes 10 minutes, then hop off and wait for another 10 minutes for the next bus and then perhaps another bus after that, you do not have any chance to relax, as you worry that you might be late. You do not feel confident that you are going to get where you are going. This really is a problem.
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