What? You're having a roundtable? Here's the plan

NickD said :

The basic problem is that Canberra was designed for car transportation – any public transport system which ventures into the suburbs is always going to be under-utilised and frustrating to ride on due to the distances involved. The current trend towards increasing Canberra’s population density is a very good idea for any number of reasons, not least that it will make public transport more viable.

Codswallop! Absolutely 180 degrees wrong. The entire satellite city concept on which Canberra was founded revolves around efficient PT between those nodes. What is missing is a government with the vision to realise that, instead of just saying whatever they need to do get through an election then promptly about-facing!

+1 tempestas

Looking at the exec summary, the solution seems to be less frequent suburban routes, more routes on feeder roads and more “bus stations” on the street in Dickson, Erindale, Molongo, and a few other places, so I’m guessing the slow bus to the feeder road change to the feeder road bus, change again at the new “bus station” then at an old interchange then the reverse if you are not going to a town centre. So it might mean a cross town trip has 4 or 5 bus changes instead of two or maybe three.

So if the connections are as bad as currently, you will get to stand in non-sheltering “shelters” for 30 mins in a 60 min trip.

My guess is every block with 200metres of a “Feeder” road will get rezoned medium or high density to make it work.

I wish they’d ban them from using the dreaded “comprised of”. brrr.

+11. I would of said the same thing myself for all intensive purposes.

The basic problem is that Canberra was designed for car transportation – any public transport system which ventures into the suburbs is always going to be under-utilised and frustrating to ride on due to the distances involved. The current trend towards increasing Canberra’s population density is a very good idea for any number of reasons, not least that it will make public transport more viable.

Pandy said :

And how to increase bus use: Increase parking to twice they are in todays real terms and place a cap on parking in the town centres. Smart move that. Not.

People need to be encouraged to use buses (one “s”) with cheaper fares and/or better (more) services. Jacking up the price of parking up or capping the number of available spots isn’t the right way to go about it IMHO. It’s just human nature for people to respond better to favourable things rather than negative.

It’s a good question – some areas affected by the gradual loss of local services since 2004 will actaully lose services if this plan is to be believed.

It seems that if you live in far flung reaches of Belconnen, Weston and Tugeranong, you will need a car even more by 2031 than you already do.

I hope those outer-suburban bogans are all feeling really, really fit – because they will need their bikes once they can’t afford the petrol anymore. I guess it is sustainable, after a fashion.

Final decisions about light rail projects will await complex
decision-making processes involving many agencies, including the ACT
Government, the National Capital Authority, and the Commonwealth in its
various roles as regulator, funding source, and leading employer. By the
time this debate is resolved, crucial opportunities will have been lost to
help shape the city in a more sustainable way.
For this reason, this plan presumes bus-based services as the likely
services in each
corridor.

Why do I hear crickets from the light rail co-alition of late?

Also looking at the route map, seems that the network has been set-up so
that the local trams (orange line) line will never happen, as some of the
roads that they travel through actually have fairly steep gradients. I am
not so certain that local communities will now be pleased to know that
their homes in suburban areas that until now have not been slated for
medium density housing, will over night now be re-zoned to allow urban
consolidation. Good news for developers wanting to cash in I guess as it will give certainty that public transport will go past their door.

For the life of me I do not understand why large parts of, Belconnen and
Tuggeranong will not have a Frequent (orange) line.

And how to increase bus use: Increase parking to twice they are in todays real terms and place a cap on parking in the town centres. Smart move that. Not.

I do not believe that Stanhope et al are in any way serious about change.

We have heard it all before, and when it’s time to come up with the money for these grand ideas, as usual there won’t be any because it has been spent on freeways and car parks. One simple example- the new carpark at the Canberra Hospital- just this one project-costs more money than they will spend on walking and cycle paths/lanes over the next decade or longer.

The Stanhope government talks a lot about sustainable transport, but look at where the money goes and you can see how feeble thier commitment really is. They are totally car oriented and all the talk and tokenistic consultations doesn’t change this.

Curious that when the ACT has a structure of community councils in place to assist such stakeholder consultation, said community councils are not invited.

There’d need to be a substantial shift in approach for this new deal to warrant much more than a resubmission of the submission we did for the last inquiry in 2007, as that inquiry has amounted to nothing to date.