Saving the planet one tax at a time

“Youami” all my neighbors with be dead in ten years time (Canberra hospital will kill them off) Young family’s will replace them, and they will need schools. They don,t want to have to drive to the ends of the earth to drop their kids of at a super school, and them on to work to be TAXED for it.

One thing is for certain TAXES and DEATH.

I’ll be a conspiracy theorist and point out that, according to this page (http://the-riotact.com/?p=1000) “Greg Friedewald” was/is John Stanhope’s cheif media advisor; and Liz Clarke is Mr Friedewald’s wife.

Who on Earth is Liz Clarke? Well, it turns out, Liz Clarke is a senior manager at ACTION http://www.linkedin.com/pub/liz-clarke/8/785/54A.

So, we’ve got a chief minister telling us to catch buses, which are managed by the wife of Stanhopes political advisor.

Boy, it’s like old Soviet Russia in this city.

emd said :

Bring on the next election so I can let the ACT ALP know what I think!

First they close the only public school within walking distance.
Then they make our new priority area school two suburbs south, when most parents in our suburb work north. And there’s only one way bus service with threats to stop it altogether.
They’ve also raised parking prices in the city for workers who don’t catch the bus or carpool.
So now that they’ve put many parents in my suburb in the position of having to drive their kids to school every day, they want to introduce an additional tax for the privilege.

Schools closed? This is a post about a congestion tax… but if you insist on ranting about it: the population of Canberra is a dynamic population and like any other city population moves. The schools were closed because they weren’t needed! Simple! No one ever mentions the new schools built in the new suburbs. Get over it!

As for congestion tax, there needs to be congestion first as so many rightly comment. And you need to build the public transport system before you can force people to use it. Even if it means making dedicated bus-lanes in lieu of light rail (say put two bus lanes in the middle of Northbourne Ave where the light rail would go).

Bring on the next election so I can let the ACT ALP know what I think!

I’m sure you’ll show them this time. Unlike last time. And the time before that.

emd said :

Bring on the next election so I can let the ACT ALP know what I think!
First they close the only public school within walking distance.

For those with short memory, the last election was 18th October last year, only 12 months ago.
The schools decision was announced in the 2006 budget.

emd said :

And there’s only one way bus service with threats to stop it altogether.

I’ve got to ask what bus service is this & who is threatening to stop it all togetehr

Bring on the next election so I can let the ACT ALP know what I think!

First they close the only public school within walking distance.
Then they make our new priority area school two suburbs south, when most parents in our suburb work north. And there’s only one way bus service with threats to stop it altogether.
They’ve also raised parking prices in the city for workers who don’t catch the bus or carpool.
So now that they’ve put many parents in my suburb in the position of having to drive their kids to school every day, they want to introduce an additional tax for the privilege.

Only if he promises to start centralising business in Civic rather than this unhelpful effort to push places of business out to the town centres.

THEY SO WANT THIS TOWN TO BE LIKE SYDNEY!!!!

I have had this donkey and his mates, this used to be such a nice country town.

To the hell with them, This guy makes the problem then wants every one else to pay for it, maybe he should run for Prime Minister, he has the experience and he fits in………

Up The Duffy said :

Town planning while on drugs. How else did we end up with this mess.

Best analysis yet of the competency of ACT Government in general.

The buses are horrendously expensive. And since they cut services ages ago, the buses have been pretty packed. If he wants to fit more people onto public transport he needs to put a few extra buses on the roads.

How about improving the public transport so people use it, instead of making life so hard for drivers that they are forced onto sub-standard buses?

Arent the (relatively) high parking fees in civic basically already a ‘congestion tax’?

Hows this going to help WORKING FAMILIES that have to drop there children of at school on the way to work????????????????????????????????????????? Seeing that it was his Government that closed a heap of Schools down.

At the moment trying to do business in Civic is a pain because there is no short term parking. So Solicitors, and Accountants move their Offices to Fyshwick so people can use there services!!!! MAKING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT EVEN BIGGER because you have to drive out there to do business. Oh then there is the Offices at the Airport, Don,t get me STARTED.

Town planning while on drugs. How else did we end up with this mess.

Then theres Government offices in satellite cities Belco, Woden, and Tugger. Try living on the north side and work in Tugger, then get a promotion to a job at the airport. Then we should all use public transport!! or ride a bike 60km round trip every day,

Oh whoops forgot about the kids and getting them to school too.

An unpopular suggestion maybe – but I think a significant amount of congestion could be avoided by installing pay-parking in the Parkes/Barton areas.

I live in Downer, work in Barton and drop my partner off in the City on my through. We only drive because it is cheaper for us to do so, than to catch a bus.

I think it is an absolute joke that there is pay-parking in areas like Tuggeranong and Belconnen, but you can park for free in the most central and established areas of Canberra. Use the money generated to subsidise & improve public transport.

When is the next election?

Stanhope needs to get it through his skull that using Carrots to get people to use public transport is more effective in the long term than always bringing the sticks out.

sadly i doubt that will happen anytime soon

goose said :

Well people, you voted this donkey in 🙂

Actully, the stupid system voted them in. A large swing went to the Greens, but considering they offset each other, they helped each other over the line.

I figure Mr Stanhope is a bit dense, so I will state the obvious reasons why people won’t use public transport:

– You increased the carpark costs to try to convince people to use public transport, yet you upped the cost of bus fares as well. It is still considerably cheaper for me to drive to work each day.
– Bus services are too slow and few and far between
– Why spend time catching a bus when it travels on the exact same “congested” lanes as my car would? I might as well drive a car that doesn’t stop every 200 metres.
– Try to implement some sort of efficient, attractive public transport alternatives. A light rail link from the Gungahlin running through Civic to Woden would be a major incentive.
– As soon as there is the slightest hint of rain, the few people who do catch a bus will drive anyway

BTW, this is not London or Sydney so any congestion tax would be a massive cop out.

#9 has nailed it – “..big cities have congestion taxes, so we must too”

the mayor is is suffering “relevance deprivation syndrome” – again

To make public transport more attactive they would need to make it faster to use it than take the car. For example, in Sydney, if you take the train chances are it’ll turn a 40 minute drive into a 15 minute train trip.

For public transport to work in Canberra they would need to find a way to make it a faster alternative. (Eg make the trains run at 200+km/h). Hey if you could get me from my place into the city in only 10 minutes I’d take the train every time…

The other thing they could do is do something good for the hip pocket… Make public transport free (remember those great few months back in 1997 when the bus drivers went on “strike” by not collecting fares:). Lets face it, from what I’ve heard ACTION is running at a loss anyways, so by making public transport free (yes I know we would indirectly pay for it with our taxes, but we’re already doing that) it’d no doubt increase the number of users.

Maybe if Stanhope removed his head from his arse then he wouldn’t be so congested.

Also ACTION don’t have the capacity to take most Canberrans to work & back. At the moment ACTION have a max carrying capacity of 25,000. Now lets say each route takes an average of 40 minutes to load & unload a bus load along a route. That means only around 35-40,000 passengers can take ACTION buses an hour. Now I would say most people go to work between 07:30 & 09:00. So not even half of Canberra can take the bus to work.

Now with light rail along the major trunk routes I would say they have a carrying capacity of 150-200+ people each (depending on the car set up). Having these run every 5-10 minutes could help get most people to & from work. My plan to “force” everyone onto public transport would be to only give each main road in the City one lane each & put in a toll booth & pay something like $5-10 each way. To accommodate for those that would like to drive part of the way there would be large car parks at Interchanges. My plan would work better with a Public Transport Tax, where the total costs of operators is totaled up & a certain amount is taken out of your pay packet each pay. There would then be no requirement for payment upon boarding of any bus/train/tram/ferry in Australia & there would be no hold ups with broken ticket machines or slow people getting on the bus. This would help to stop assaults of public transport drivers, but if you are already paying for the use of the bus why wouldn’t you catch the bus. I know that no one likes extra taxes, but it encourages the public to use public transport & in these days when no one likes carrying coins/notes around for fear of theft it helps.

The justification for a congestion tax is to get drivers to pay for the negative externalities associated with congestion.

We don’t have that in Canberra.

This is a ridiculous idea. Canberra doesn’t come close to comparing to cities that do have congestion taxes, such as Singapore or London.

I wonder where the toll booths would be located, and how much they would charge to forcefully make buses more viable?

It should be renamed the ‘poor planning tax’, and you pay for the suffering!

Good old Jon. He just keeps giving me more reasons to move back to Sydney. I already moved out to Queanbeyan after 3 years in the ACT. With the way things are going I will go back to Sysney, 6 years after moving down here under the belief of a better lifestyle for my family. The Act govt seems intent on pushing people away.

I would have thought that there actually being a congestion problem would be a prerequisite to having a congestion tax. This is a solution desperately in search of a problem in Canberra. My guess is the thinking behind it is “big cities have congestion taxes, so we must too”.

Decent public transport would also help encourage its use, too, as opposed to punishing non-users into using it.

What a load of rubbish – surely there needs to be congestion before you can call it a congestion charge. Canberra is far too small for a charge to work.

What congestion is he going to tax?! I didn’t think we had any REAL congestion anywhere in Canberra!

Does he mean the 15 minute periods before 9am and after 5am where you may be delayed 5 minutes when driving in and out of Civic at peak hour?

What a joke…

Well people, you voted this donkey in 🙂

Now now Johnboy… easy up there… it’s a noble gesture, you know… more consultation/ no commitment… sounds almost like a greens pledge

“You could try running decent weekend services so we don’t need to run a car anyway you blockhead. “

Ha! I love it! JB you champion.

But seriously… how can Canberra’s “congested roads” be compared to any other of the major cities…

a decent service full stop. going north/south is easy enough, but anything east/west is ridiculous!

I’d change that to running a decent service full stop…

It takes me around 30 minutes to drive from my place to the city…
It takes at least an hour and 10 minutes to bus it, and that’s excluding any time spent walking from my place to the bus stop \ interchange to which ever office I am going to, and that’s assuming that the bus then arrives into the city at the time I want to get there…

Tell me Mr Stanhope, why would I use a “service” which doubles my commute time?
I wouldn’t happily pay a toll, but I would pay a toll over using our bus no-service…