Page 3502 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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(f) in heavy rain or if the floodway is flooded, the footpath across it may become dangerous to use and pedestrians are encouraged to use this alternative path; and
(g) the footpath can also become dirty and muddy as a result of pedestrians walking down the grass slope from the eastern side of the carpark to the footpath. TCCS are investigating options to discourage this behaviour and have organised a clean-up of the footpath to remove the accumulated silt and mud; and
(2) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) investigate ways to improve the path and general access to the Wanniassa Park and Ride stop to alleviate safety concerns; and
(b) report back to the Assembly by the last sitting day of 2019 on options to improve the path and how and when that will take place.”.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.13): I thank Ms Lawder for her fulsome contribution this morning. This is a very important issue. What we are trying to do to Canberra, and Tuggeranong in particular, is retrofit it to do something different from what it was originally designed for. If we had originally designed Tuggeranong with a park and ride I hazard a guess that it would not have been located where it currently is. When Tuggeranong was designed the idea was that the town districts would be pretty much self-contained and we were not going to have as much transport in and out of the suburbs as we do now. For various reasons we have a much more centralised city than we thought we would have when Tuggeranong was designed, and it is suffering, from a public transport point of view, as a result of that change.
I have great sympathy for the people in Tuggeranong, for whom public transport is not as good as it should be. I think we all agree that putting in the park and ride was a positive move, and it is unfortunate that the available location has the problems Ms Lawder has identified and with which Minister Steel has agreed.
The Greens obviously support public transport. We will support Minister Steel’s amendment. There are a few small issues with it, but it maintains an acknowledgement of the problem and is more specific in some areas. I have not seen this area in flood, although I go past it every time I visit Bunnings. It clearly is in a floodway and at times—I could almost say, unfortunately, not enough, given the drought we are in—this is a problem.
As Minister Steel noted, TCCS has cleared up the debris and silt from the path as a result of Ms Lawder raising this problem. I hope they have also looked at any issues with the original plan. With two quite large drainage pipes water should not be running over the top of that.
As I said, this is not an issue only for Wanniassa. It is not even an issue only for Tuggeranong; it is an issue for all of Canberra. We need better public transport and better ways of accessing public transport. Park and ride is one way we can make it easy for people to access public transport. At this stage I put in a plea for the park and ride at the RSPCA on the Cotter Road. It is nearly full and will be full very soon. That
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