Page 3377 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
taking journeys on the network. And that is a very positive thing. As the network becomes embedded, because it is still relatively early days, we will continue to monitor and review how people are using the new public transport network and will make tweaks where needed. In fact, we have made over a hundred tweaks to the network since it started on 29 April.
There have been an extraordinary 4,571,499 boardings on bus and light rail services, 11.3 per cent more boardings than the same period in 2018. There have been 3.36 million journeys on bus and light rail services, which is 6.9 per cent more journeys than during the same period in 2018. We are seeing more people using the public transport network overall. And that was certainly one of the reasons why we invested such a significant amount in light rail and why we have also looked at further changes to make sure that we have got an integrated transport system with buses and light rail working together with other types of transport services to increase the number of people who find our public transport system to be a better alternative to the car.
The numbers speak to the benefits that Canberrans in every district and every suburb are seeing from the delivery of the first stage of the city’s light rail network from Gungahlin to the city. Light rail now accounts for around one in every five boardings on Transport Canberra services, and it simply would not be possible to provide the frequent, all-day services Transport Canberra operates in other parts of the city without light rail doing the heavy lifting on one of the busiest transport corridors in our city. It allowed us to use all those freed-up kilometres of bus travel to then be able to provide those more frequent services elsewhere.
While I understand Ms Le Couteur’s comment in relation to the number of extra services we have put on compared to the number of people using our transport system, we certainly hope that over time more people will use those frequent services as they come to learn how to use the network. The new journey planner is a very good way to do that. And hopefully people will take up the opportunity of using the public transport system for the first time.
I am very keen on hearing feedback from the community as we continue to operate the new transport network. It is only early days. Whilst there was some initial feedback, mainly in relation to the changes that were made compared to the previous network, what I am keen to hear from the community is areas where they think that improvements can be made to the network.
Recently—I have made mention of this before—I met with the Mitchell traders to discuss the Mitchell service, which is now being extended out to EPIC, which is one of the tweaks we have made. We will continue to make improvements to the new network because we want to make sure that it becomes a service that people want to use and that will increase patronage over time. Of course the government is very much committed to bringing light rail across the lake to Woden so that we can extend the benefits and successes that we have seen with light rail stage 1 to other parts of the city.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video