Page 158 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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MRS DUNNE: Minister, will the government advise the community of the options and give a copy of the options paper to the Assembly’s planning and urban renewal committee for consideration during its SPIRE inquiry? If not, why not?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Dunne for the question. As I have indicated, these are matters that will be subject to cabinet consideration. That is why the documents were not provided in the FOI request. I will consider whether it is appropriate to provide that information both publicly and to the committee. What I do not want to do is to create further confusion in the public mind. We are getting on with the job. We are listening to the community, and we are developing options to address the issues that have been raised with us in terms of traffic and pedestrian access to the SPIRE project site. We will be releasing information as soon as it is available to the public.
We have already been having conversations. I have already said publicly that I was considering matters in relation to the interaction between pedestrian and vehicle traffic on Hospital Road, for example. But these are matters that we are still working through. As soon as we can provide further information to the public, we absolutely will. We will, of course, be making a submission to the Assembly committee inquiry into planning for the SPIRE project. We very much welcome the opportunity to do that, and I will give consideration to whether we can include that information or whether at this stage it would simply raise further confusion for the community and be inappropriate in relation to cabinet considerations.
ACT Health—SPIRE project
MRS JONES: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, in addressing the petition on SPIRE that was tabled in the Assembly on 28 November last year, you said that traffic modelling on Gilmore Crescent and Palmer Street in Garran was underway and that the community would be consulted on the outcome of that study. Minister, why was traffic modelling not done, and why did you not consult with the community on that modelling before deciding on the location of SPIRE on the eastern side of the Canberra Hospital campus?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Jones for the question. As I have already said, a lot of due diligence was done and many years of work were undertaken to determine that this was in fact the best location on the Canberra Hospital campus for the project.
In relation to traffic modelling, I can confirm that the survey data was received in early January 2020 and is currently being analysed. This analysis will establish the current traffic activity and road intersection capacity through traffic modelling. The outcomes of this activity are expected to be provided to Major Projects Canberra in early February 2020—about now-ish. We will of course be making those available and they will be part of our conversation with the community. The traffic survey data was collected for a seven-day period in mid-December 2019 of roads within and around the hospital campus. This included Yamba Drive, Gilmore Crescent, Hospital Road and Palmer Street and a number of intersections. Various survey methods have been used, including automatic tube counters and intersection and drop-off surveys, with the use of video cameras as well.
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