Callam Street in Woden closed from today as light rail works begin

One of the reasons to move to trams was the virtue signaling fact that they had no carbon/greenhouse emissions coming out an exhaust pipe like the buses do.

Since the decision to go to the first stage of a tram to nowhere network green electric buses have come of age and indeed the same government is ordering them but incredibly they won’t be used to replace the efficient but “dirty” buses. Instead, a tram system which costs heaps more and slower than the buses it is replacing will be implemented.

It’s definitely about urban renewal and not about public transport.

Yes,but it is by no means certain that light rail stimulates urban redevelopment more than BRT. Much depends on design of the system. The government is loose with the truth and believes it can to whatever it wants given the weakness of the opposition

Trams are sexier than buses.

Well, the future generations will be paying for it so it’s the ACT Labor/Green government’s legacy to them.

And it’s very much NOT needed.

Good legacy to leave behind IMO.
Thanks your opinion.

The cost of all the road works is actually buggering up the network for cars which is 95% of the road users.

Saying its a great legacy is like saying that covid is going to be great for generations.

No it so sure about your statement that longer travel times don’t bring more passengers.

In the act we already have an example of where the opposite is true. The old 333 between Belconnen and City used to be much faster than the 3xx’s are today. I. The old days it was under 15 minutes. But by rerouting it via college street and Haydon Drive in Bruce it added 10 minutes to the trip but significantly more passengers as it serves more places along the way.

And the main reason the Woden line will be slower is because it will stop more (serving more places) and also route via the edge of the park triangle.

So sure May loose some passengers going city to Woden but likely to pick up more by stopping more and serving the triangle.

It’s getting more like the Bermuda Triangle every day, JC. Losing more than passengers.

Not sure about the adding 10 minutes to the 333 journey by changing to go past College St and UC. The change Only added 1.2km to the journey distance and from my days working at ABS over the route change it only added about 4 minutes, often less.

As for bus use patronage increases since that route change most of the gains have been from the additional apartments and population growth in Belco town centre, the removal of buses like the old 435 direct from Belco to Barton via Civic, the 464 through Cook and Aranda to Civic, UC student numbers more than doubling and buses taking people from the Suburbs into the Belco Town Centre for the bus transfer, instead .

Making public transport trips slower is a proven driver of reduced use of the service. You saw it in the parts of Canberra that had slower bus trips after the 2019 changes.

I think your drawing a long bow JC finding a correlation between the 333 Belco bus route changes and it generating increased bus use. The percentage of people in Belconnen taking the bus decreased over the period of the route change according to the ABS Census. Canberra bus use % has actually declined over the decades.

That makes no sense. Your comparisons are 20-25 years apart. The “new” bus route takes longer because it services a bigger area and since Canberra is a substantially bigger City now than when the 333’s were running, even though the service takes longer, the service will pick up more people.