22 November 2007

Proposed new Bus Routes: Giralang punished

| Tempestas
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The proposed new bus routes are up here.

Giralang, successful in keeping its Primary School however is to be punished.

No longer will Giralang residents have a direct bus to Civic, nor will there be a direct bus route to the nearest shops – Kaleen Plaza.
The proposed frequencies if they follow the current patterns will mean 2 buses from Gunghalin arriving seconds apart for a trip to Belconnen then a change to a intertown or express.

The lack of a local shops (apart from the Vietnamese restaurant) will make Giralang a no go zone for the elderly and other non-driving residents.

Maybe other suburbs are also to be punished. Best check your route out now

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Why do Giralang residents think they are so bad done by??

No shops, schools or buses…welcome to Stanhopia.

At least Giralang had some services to start with, a number of suburbs built within the last 10 yrs dont and will not ever have the services Giralang residents are crying about losing. It’s the new norm.

Action staff have been ordered to remove signs which had been placed around Giralang by concerned residents. Obviously, Action wants to keep the changes quiet.

DMD, I think the -normal- justification for light rail in Canberra is that we need to start planning now, while we don’t quite need it, so that when we -do- need it we have the ability to use it.
Rather than do like we’re doing with nationawide broadband now, and forever play catchup.

But you can’t put it in once the city has 3Million people. You need to actually plan in advance.

Deadmandrinking3:02 pm 26 Nov 07

Um, barney, does canberra really have the numbers on public transport to justify light rail? I’m not arguing, I don’t actually know. But I kind of think this town may still be a little too small to justify such an expensive venture when improved buses would do just fine.

3 words: LIGHT RAIL NOW!

in addition, airports don’t have pirate ships so if there were pirates in Giralang why would they want to catch a bus to the airport?

There are plenty of pirates at the airport – they run the car parks!

moneypenny261211:08 am 25 Nov 07

Watson also loses a service – which is crazy considering that North Watson is a growing residential area. ACTION wants to put the weekend service on 7 days a week – a big loop around Watson then into the city via Downer.

While it seems that the frequency of service will improve a bit on weekdays, it will be a more indirect service – which does not equal a net improvement.

Also, I work on National Circuit and it looks like there is a loss of services along there outside the very short “peak periods” – with rumours about pay parking being introduced for the government offices in Barton / Forrest / Parkes, it seems crazy to cut services through there. I have a horrible feeling that between 5.40pm and 7.30pm weekdays, i will have to wait an hour, instead of 20-30 minutes, for a bus (I often work after 6pm)

ALso, why isn’t the bus network planning to use GDE for expresses to City or Woden? They should be planning for Gunghalin to be linked to Belco, Woden, and Civic as frequently as other town centres. Instead it looks like Gunghalin is still a backwater for ACTION.

Good question sepi, judging by the lack of us too posts here there are lots of suburbs that don’t feel they have something to complain about.
Hulby the Giralang Residents action groups email seems not to be working.

Yeah not happy re. Girlang lossing it’s 30 to Kaleen/City/Woden etc.

I ran into Bill Stefaniak Friday (23/11)and brought this issue to his attention. He seemed surprised but interested in hearing me out. I followed up with an email to him.
I’ve also brought it to the attention of the Giralang Action Group.
I suggest other Girlang/Kaleen residents who feel short changed also make your feelings known to the MLAs.
Also the proposed ‘shops’ for Girlang are pathetic. 3 tiny shops, heaps of townhouses and hardly any carparking.
If concerned speak to Girlang Action Group of MLA.

So is anyone benefitting?

What is better about the new routes?

Amaroo has come off second best with the buses too. Got rid of the two buses that serviced the area (53 and 54) and replaced it with a “loop” service which means it’ll take me an hour to get to work instead of 25. Score.

I agree that the 47 chasing the 30/32 when it happened was silly.

I know that some people do use the get off at Radford cross the road and get a intertown series – however its not an all-weather solution, doesn’t work for the elderly, infirm or the like and relies heavily on the intertown buses being frequent enough that you can catch one where you don’t need to be pushed on.

Currently the 51,53,& 54 tend to arrive within 3 minutes of each other at the William Slim end of Chuculba – so routing the new 51/52 thru Giralang will only change which buses are chasing each other to Baldwin drive.
Catching these buses going the other way will result in a 1 hour trip to Civic.

It seems that lots of the revised bus routes are milk runs, which is the reason many people avoid catching buses in Canberra. Surely there is some decent software to enable much better routes than this.

Canberra’s unique multi-town centre approach has always presented a challenge for public transport, so perhaps a more unique solution is needed. We need fast regular services through each suburb which connect with express services to town & group centres from there. People don’t mind changing, its the interminable waiting in crappy interchanges that gets to them.

I can see the rationale for cutting route 47 and changing the course of the 51 and 52 to provide a service for Giralang. This doesn’t help Kaleen though. When I have used the 47 the majority of passengers have been from Kaleen. I guess they can take the 30 or the 31 depending on which half of the suburb they live in.

It is possible to take the (new) 51/52 bus to College Street (in front of Radford) and then grab a 100,200 or 300 series bus into Civic. This is my preferred route to town (using route 47 to get to College St).

I don’t mind them cutting routes if they streamline the service and increase the frequency of buses. I always thought it was dumb having the 47 and 30 chase each other around Giralang and Kaleen when staggering the services by 10 minutes would have provided a much more useable service.

If their proposed frequency of a bus every 15 minutes is realised it could be an improved service.

I was not happy to read there will be no more bus services to Civic from Giralang. We won’t even have a peak hour service! The route 30 is very popular with Giralang residents and it is insane that they are cutting this service.

Yeah the one that goes directly to his free reserved car park infront of the Legislative Assembly.

Such a great new route structure, I thought they were supposed to be improving the network?

All the services are still routed to go the longest way possible, and good to see the 34 will remain the closest to being the longest and slowest bus route in Australia.

And then there’s the claim for more peak hour services, but they choose to axe the expresso service that services Monash, Gowrie, Fadden and Wanniassa with the line “catch route buses 65 66 67” none of which go to the city unless you catch the odd one that goes around the mulberry bush through campbell. One would have thought that they would expand on a service that only ran 3 times a day and was jam packed on every occasion, but then it shows exactly why I haven’t caught a bus in more than a year.

green_frogs_go_pop9:34 pm 22 Nov 07

great..so now instead of having two intertowns, and one expresso go through my suburb, i now get one bus that takes the long way around to either tuggeranong, or through heaps of other suburbs, through erindale, and finally to woden or civic.

stupid much??

Do bus services go past Stanhopes home in Bruce direct to Civic?

i demand ‘espresso’ services, where i can ask for a macchiato with my fare and get a side of nougat with it to keep me happy while i ride…

I lose more than I gain out of this ‘improved’ plan, and I havent had good bus services through my suburb since their first Slash and Burn budget…
So I’m guessing if this is ‘improved’, the original revisions were godawful.

Their point may be that if you’re in tuggeranong and trying to get into the City, catch a specific 3** bus?
Rather than weave your way through Barton & Russell?

It will suck a salty ball to catch a bus in Barton and think it’ll get you ino the City, though…

Stupid plan.

How about two expresso services that go from Tuggers to Barton and Russell – but NOT then into the city – all off at Russell! What’s wrong with an extra 5 mins of driving to at least get us into the city? It’s clear that they took no notice of submissions before coming up with these routes….

The elemental term is Lyin Piryte.

Typsy McStaggers12:05 pm 22 Nov 07

Sepi did you check out the Xpresso routes? 701/2 both go from Northside to Russell. Best bit about that is no school kids.

I thought I saw a pirate near the lake, but it wasn’t a pirate, just a bloke dressed up as a pirate. Upsetting.

Bugger – our northside bus no longer goes to russell.
Instead it goes the loooong way round to woden.
Probably only affects a handful of people that live in my suburb and work at defence though. But a bummer for us!
Time to buy a second car.

giralang residents will have to bunk in with the aboriginal tent embassy…

Won’t somebody please think of the over charged pizza prices.

And seems that Action think it’s only people living in Gunghalin and Tuggeranong who work at Brindabella Business Park.

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