Page 3500 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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Travel and Minister for Transport) (10.08): I am very pleased to speak in support of this motion today which highlights the investments that the ACT government has made to both public transport in the Wanniassa and Kambah areas and walking and cycling infrastructure to keep Canberrans connected and make it easier to move around our city.
I begin by acknowledging that Ms Lawder wrote to me in July about this issue and I responded to her earlier this week. The amendment that I foreshadow to her motion today echoes that letter of response.
As members may be aware, in 2017 the ACT government made a very significant investment in public transport infrastructure through the construction of a park-and-ride facility at Wanniassa. This included the provision of two new bus stops on Athllon Drive, new bus shelters, footpaths and a new pedestrian crossing to increase access to public transport for residents in Wanniassa. Earlier this year, in April, we introduced the new rapid 5 bus route through Wanniassa which is providing frequent services for Wanniassa residents.
These park-and-ride services and the new bus stops are particularly important, because it was very difficult for residents living on the eastern side of Kambah and the western edge of Wanniassa to access what was then the blue rapid service and which is not the R4 route running along Athllon Drive. This bus stop has been incredibly popular, as has the park and ride. It is great to see that over the two years since it was built the community is using this new facility to help them get around.
The footpath referred to in Ms Lawder’s motion was constructed to provide access from the park and ride to the bus stops on Athllon drive. Given the floodway that exists between the park and ride and the bus stops, before constructing the footpath Transport Canberra and City Services engaged Northrop Consulting Engineering Services to undertake an independent flood study to review the potential impact of storm flows on the pedestrian crossing area.
The report demonstrated that the two 1,800-millimetre diameter stormwater mains that run below the swale perpendicular to the floodway crossing had sufficient capacity to ensure that the crossing would have minimal if any flooding over an average 10-year period. However, to ensure optimal safety of pedestrians the report also recommended that signage be erected to advise of the risk to users in the event of a rainfall event and that an alternative route should be provided.
In line with those recommendations, a warning sign was installed at both approaches to the footpath, and a short section of footpath was constructed on Rylah Crescent to connect to an alternative footpath route via Langdon Avenue, Atkins Street and Athllon Drive to provide safer access to the bus stops during wet periods.
I acknowledge that this alternative path is significantly longer than the path across the floodway and that there are some safety issues with its current arrangement, including the necessity to either cross Athllon Drive or walk along an unpaved section of it to get to the bus stop. However, due to the very low risk of water build-up in the floodway, pedestrians would rarely need to use that route. The alternative route is
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