Page 3378 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
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Under our city-wide light rail network that we outlined in our light rail masterplan, we hope that other parts of the city can benefit from light rail services that are comfortable and provide a mass transit system for a city that will hit half a million very soon, and we need to make sure that we are establishing the backbone of the transport network with the Gungahlin to Woden route that can serve our city. In the future I really hope that it goes down to places like Tuggeranong in Mr Parton’s electorate. I hope he would support that cause as well. It is a service that I think has been primed with the R4 route, which is the most popular route in the network.
I look forward to continuing to work on further investments in our transport network in future, to improve patronage, and we will continue to monitor how the system is operating, including in suburbs that are on the fringes of our city. I certainly agree with Ms Le Couteur’s comment that this is a public transport system for all. We hope that everyone can benefit, and we will continue to make sure that that is the case.
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (3.33): I am very pleased to speak on this matter of public importance today. I am surprised that it was brought on by Mr Parton, but he has insisted to me that he has taken the bus at least a few times in his life.
I take Ms Le Couteur’s point that having to change buses can give people some degree of anxiety. I noticed Minister Steel nodding when Ms Le Couteur was raising that important point. I will not stand here and pretend that things are all sunshine and roses. I do understand that changing buses does cause anxiety for people.
Firstly, I want to commend the many officers at the interchanges who have helped people to change buses for the first time. We have received extraordinarily positive feedback about that. I also think it is worth stressing that while a few people benefited from those long, winding, meandering routes through the suburbs that basically were delivering people door to door, it was a huge barrier in terms of some people taking up public transport. It was a massive turn-off for them; they did not want to sit on the bus while it stopped every few hundred metres. They just wanted to get from place to place. As a government we did have a responsibility, as part of our commitment to getting more people on public transport, to try to shake things up a little bit.
I acknowledge that there have been some really big changes for people, and we have been listening. I know that some of those changes have not been particularly well suited to some people’s lives, but we have been listening really carefully and recording all of the feedback, and feeding that back to Minister Steel.
I have even taken the bus home with different constituents so that I can experience what they are going through. Sometimes things can get better over time as well, as people get more used to things. As Minister Steel said—and I really appreciate and am comforted by his efforts in this space—with more than 100 tweaks, I know it has made a huge difference to some of the routes in Belconnen. There are still a few outstanding issues that we are continuing to work on and provide feedback on.
Things are improving. It is slow going; this was a huge change. It was a massive shake-up of the network. I encourage people to continue to give us that feedback. We
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