Infrastructure plan out to 2021

Page 32 sums it up well. The whole plan seems fairly crap to me and I am not surprised. The short-term transport plan has strong emphasis on improving pedestrian and cycle routes throughout Civic. WTF for? On neither foot nor bike do I struggle to get around in Civic, the joint is freaking small FFS. I agree that a transport corridor down Northbourne makes a huge deal of sense, but exapnding other transport corridors is blown out until >10 years. I have not spoken to one Canberra resident who can comprehend why the main thoroughfares linking town centres (i.e. Barry Dr/Belconnen Way, Hindmarsh, Drakeford, Adelaide/Yarra Glen, Flemington et al.) are not completed using dedicated bus lanes (or god forbid some freaking light rail). These morons in the legislative assembly can upgrade all the buses they like, but until they concentrate on giving us logical routes then we’re going to continue to have lots of brand new empty buses.

/rant

I’m pretty sure they wheel a 10 year infrastructure plan every 2 or so years.. Mostly a waste of time, effort and money.

Plenty of “we’re thinking about it” in there, a lot of lack of doing anything. Also the continuing half arsed jobs. For example:

Why bother duplicating William Slim Drive when Gundaroo Drive from Gungahlin needs to be duplicated desperately too? Doing one without the other is useless.

Extending Horse Park Drive to the non-existent suburb, but no plan to duplicate the whole road which is already needed. The figures show the population of the suburbs surrounding the road will skyrocket, but no plan to duplicate. Add in the proposed duplication of Majura road will cause a huge bottleneck when it goes into one lane.

Then you have no plans to update the traffic management infrastructure or road networks. Most of the gridlock and traffic problems that currently exist are a result of the government being unable to run and synchronise a set a traffic lights to save themselves. Adding more buses or other public transport is going to be useless when they have to stop at every intersection.

I just had a quick look, and will read it in depth shortly, but in public transport terms, its pretty disappointing.

A quick word count tells more:

Sustainable – 86 times
Bus – 69 times
Road – 44 times
Public transport – 9 times
Light Rail – 1 mention (as part of a northbourne transit corridor feasabiity study)

The govco just love that word sustainable, im just not sure how they propose to actually achieve it.

Damien Haas
Chair, ACT Light Rail

Only one mention of light rail (or rail at all) in the entire thing, another proposal for a study into the feasibility of it up Northborne.
Fail.

Oh also roads on your roads so you can drive while you drive. (at $3 ltr or however stupid high prices are going to be in 2021)