Transport news

Gungahlin residents can look forward to improved bus services from November 2010.

TAMS staff will attend GCC meetings in October and November to talk about these changes, as well as seek your input into studies of future bus service design, demand responsive transport and the new Gungahlin Major Station, which will be built in 2011-12.

ACTION’s new bus timetable will start in mid-November. It includes a range of improvements for Gungahlin including an additional morning Xpresso trip to Brindabella Park, a new weekday route through Franklin and upgraded infrastructure. New bus stops and bike rails have already been installed on Flemington Road - look for the distinctive orange ACTION bollards along the route. New park’n’ride and bike’n’ride facilities will also be completed by early 2011 at Flemington Road/Nullabor Ave and EPIC respectively.

Read more: ACTION bus wins for Gungahlin

Great news for Gungahlin commuters - the demolition works on the GDE bridge site have finished and the Barton Highway is open again.

However, the collapse and resulting traffic mayhem have served to underline the precarious state of our key commute routes.

Completion of the four-laning of Gungahlin Drive will help a little for some people and destinations. But we desperately need the bottlenecks on Flemington Road fixed, and the go-kart track that is Gundaroo Drive/William Slim Drive upgraded for people who commute from the west side and to Belconnen.

Roads ACT boss Tony Gill has advised that demolition of the collapsed bridgeworks on Barton Highway is to commence today.

The works should take five to seven days.

Meanwhile, problems from diverting traffic continue to plague Gungahlin commutes. People are coming off Barton Highway onto Gungahlin Drive, then turning right into Mitchell at the Sandford Street lights, and at Wells Station Drive.

Combined with the Flemington Road roadworks nearing completion at Harrison and Mitchell, we have a few serious chokepoints on Flemington Road and Gungahlin Drive. Tony has agreed to look at the traffic light sequencing to give more time to the through traffic.

When a new subdivision is developed, it’s accepted that the ACT Government would not approve the development unless certain infrastructure is installed from Day 1—assets such as the roads, footpaths and street trees.

So why then is it that infrastructure essential to uptake of public transport is not also required up-front?

Gungahlin suburbs finished years ago still have huddles of amazingly tolerant bus users standing around shivering in winter drizzle and sweltering under summer suns. Meanwhile Roads ACT works through a waiting list of hundreds of well-used bus stops, installing a handful of open-air seats a year. Really popular stops with small crowds waiting every day might hit the jackpot and score a shelter—with seating for just three people! Go figure the maths on that.

Is it any wonder that at the first sight of rain, so many people abandon the bus in droves, and the roads become choked with cars?

By not requiring adequate public transport infrastructure up front in new estates, the ACT Government is effectively training new residents to instead use their cars.

Read more: Why train residents to use cars?

The Canberra Times (Suburbs worse off after road cancelled, 5/8/2010) incorrectly stated that the proposed Monash Drive road route around the base of Mount Ainslie has been scrubbed.

The reality is that that the ACT Government has requested the National Capital Authority remove it from their plans. The NCA has agreed only to investigate and consult on the proposal, but has not agreed to any cancellation at this stage.

Gungahlin Community Council has serious concerns that if ACT Governments of whatever guise continue to fail to deliver fast, segregated, efficient and commuter-attractive public transport for our residents, then Monash Drive will prove absolutely essential.

Read more: Monash Drive has to stay

When ABC Stateline asked us who they could interview regarding Gungahlin’s bus services, we suggested they go to the main REDEX stop in Gungahlin town centre one weekday morning, and they did.

Comments from active bus users were quite positive, reflecting growing popularity in both the REDEX express services and the normal routes. But there was understandable surprise when they were told that the ACT Government would take 20 years to roll out the ACTION service model adopted after the recent review.

These are thoughts that echo concerns raised by us at the time the redesign was being canvassed. We said then that it is what we need right now – not in 20 years time – if we are to ensure a successful public transport service in Canberra. And it is what we need now if we are to put the brakes on the huge amounts the Government has to spend on road construction when we all stay in our cars.

There is one enduring myth that continues to be put about on Canberra and public transport, and it comes up again in this article – that it’s a problem that Canberra is widely dispersed. This is not a problem as long as the public transport can connect quickly between the key satellite nodes. And that’s a key problem with ACTION services – almost everything gets channelled through Civic, and the Government continues to sell off land along these major routes, thereby ensuring that they can’t connect the nodes quickly.

The ALP is telling the ACT Assembly - and Harrison residents - to 'go jump' over the potential realignment of Well Station Drive where it is to join Horse Park Drive.

Read more: Well Station Drv - ALP tells Assembly 'go jump'

ACTION's REDEX rapid bus service connecting the Gungahlin town centre to Civic and south Canberra looks to be building momentum.

The every 15-minute service is giving potential passengers the certainty they need to get serious about using public transport, with passenger numbers on the increase - 1377 on one day alone - and an overall increase of 4.2% in patronage.

The ACT Government, following pressure from the ACT Greens MLAs as part of their post-election agreement with the ALP, funded the $1 million trial, which will run through to July this year. Extending the service type to other town centres will depend on the success of the Gungahlin service, so GCC urges all Gungahlin residents to consider giving REDEX a go.

Residents of the eastern end of Well Station in Harrison have had a win in their campaign to have the proposed extension of Well Station Drive realigned to move it away from their street.

The ACT Assembly has carried a resolution calling on the ACT ALP Government to redesign the northern end of the raod to intersect with Horse Park Drive further east, putting it on the eastern side of the small hill in that area rather than on the western side of it, and right in front of their street.

This road will be built next year as a two-lane arterial road, but is planned to grow to four lanes in the future as the next suburbs of Kenny and Throsby get built.

Credit goes to local resident Uday Kazar for leading an effective and dogged campaign.

It's not over yet. The ALP may yet ignore the direction and wishes of the Assembly, although this would be most unwise of them.

I have discussed our concerns about the road and support for the residents' campaign with Planning Minister Andrew Barr's senior advisor, and invited Andrew to physically walk the site with me to see it first hand rather than from a map - it's an eye-opener.

View Gungahlin locations in a larger map

An extract from Hansard of the (quite lengthy) debate follows:

Read more: Well Station Drive realignment ordered

From Monday 16 November ACTION will be trialling a high frequency, limited stop, rapid bus service - REDEX - between Gungahlin Market Place and Kingston Railway Station.

The trial will continue through until 30 June 2010 (including school holidays, but not the Christmas/New Year period).

The REDEX route will travel via Mitchell, Northbourne Avenue, the City, Russell and Barton.

This REDEX trial was chosen because it is consistent with one of the key routes identified within the draft Public Transport Network Plan.

The route will operate every 15 minutes between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Friday.

Full details can be found here on the Action website

THE time for public submissions into the environmental impact of the Majura Parkway expired this week.

But the trouble with the parkway is not environmental – it goes through a bit of clapped out kangaroo and cattle country. The problem is more an economic one and one of federal-territory relations.

Incidentally, isn’t it pitiful that road authorities can give the name “parkway” to a belt of harsh concrete containing cars belching out noxious gases and tyre noise. I can’t imagine anything further from the meaning of a park.

The background documents for the new freeway all suggest that its construction is a foregone conclusion. Further, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said that the corridor would also contain a very fast train if it were constructed.

I hate to use the cliché crossroads, but perhaps it is apposite here. Canberra’s transport system is at the crossroads. Do we continue to go down the route (pardon the pun) of Sydney and Los Angeles and assume that constructing ever more expensive freeways will solve all traffic problems?

Canberra as a planned city was supposed to avoid traffic congestion. It was supposed to have four or five roughly equal commercial-residential centres, instead of the high-density centre that other cities have. But development interests over the years wore away that principle in favour of a high-density centre because that’s how developers make money.

The trouble is, Canberrans still wanted to drive to work and park easily, and transport planners bowed to the demand. Tuggeranong “Parkway” and Gungahlin Drive were built, and even in a small place like Canberra instantly became clogged at peak times.

It is economically foolish to continue this way. We have wasted $200 million on Gungahlin Drive and we will waste another $250 million on Majura Parkway. And no doubt another several hundred million on a Molonglo Parkway. We do this because we stupidly think that it is efficient and convenient to have a transport system that in order to take an 80 kilogram body to the centre of the city requires 500 kilograms of metal and plastic to go with it.

We do it because no government is prepared to bear the opprobrium of going through the hiatus period in which people are weaned off their cars on to a public transport system which initially is not very attractive.

The present bus service is nowhere near reliable or frequent enough to allow most families to ditch one or more of their cars. Nor is it frequent enough for people to duck out of work during the day for personal matters – across town to the dentist or back home to meet a plumber or whatever.

It can only become more reliable, more frequent and cheaper to run and use if more people use it. But that will not happen while governments go on providing cheap, long-term parking (directly, or indirectly through development conditions which require parking spaces) and ever more freeways.

In the short term, freeways and masses of parking will appease the masses, but in the long term the masses have to pay – one way or the other — for the obvious inefficiency of carrying 580 kilograms per person per journey. Cars can only move 2500 people an hour in each lane. Buses can move nearly 10 times that and rail 20 times. Once you get a population the size of Canberra’s you simply cannot provide enough roads if everyone wants to go to work by car. The Majura Parkway will get clogged at peak periods fairly quickly.

The costs come in congestion; pollution; poor-returning land use in the form of parking, freeways and personal garaging; and high fuel costs.

The Parkway will benefit some in the long term, though – the airport for example. For the airport, VFT does not stand for Very Fast Train but Very Fast Trucks.

The only danger for the airport in the Majura Parkway is that it might open a corridor for a very fast train. The road on its own would be fine for the airport because trucks, unlike trains, do not carry passengers.

But cutting the time a truck gets to Sydney from the airport would be a boon. From the time the curfew stops flights in Sydney at 11pm to around 4am freight coming in to Canberra by air could be in Sydney CBD before any freight arriving in Sydney after the curfew lifts at 6am.

The Majura Parkway will also solve a lot of traffic problems near the airport caused by poor federal-territory co-ordination on planning that allowed a major commercial centre to be built at the airport site. No-one can live near this commercial hub because of the noise so people have to commute at peak times.

The $250 million for just 11.5 kilometres of road will not be well spent. That same money could go a long way to improve bus frequency – a more efficient use of existing roads. Or to start light rail which will move people more efficiently and reap revenue from increased land prices around railway stations that come with the permanence of a rail.

Alas, however, nearly all the $250 million will be coming from the Federal Government, so it is hardly likely the ACT Government will refuse it, no matter how much better it could be spent elsewhere.

The two governments should be co-ordinating better transport options for Canberra not squandering $250 million on just 11.5 kilometres of road that might help the airport and temporarily relieve a few Gungahlin-Fyshwick-Tuggeranong commuters but will be of little benefit to the great majority of Canberrans.

As for the Very Fast Train, it should not be part of the equation. The train could use the Majura corridor with or without the parkway and the parkway could use it with or without the train.

And in any event, one of the prime efficiencies of trains is that they take people from central to central, and so any VFT should have a station at Parliament House and Civic.

We should go back to the drawing boards.

Reproduced from Crispin Hull's Blog - http://www.crispinhull.com.au/

GCC has been campaigning against this sub-standard road surface, which has been used this past year on everything from suburban culs de sac to major arterials such as Woden’s Hindmarsh Drive. It is harsh, noisy, and in suburban streets highly inappropriate, making for a hazardous ‘cheese grater’ surface for any of our children unlucky enough to come off their bicycle.

And it doesn’t last. At a recent GCC meeting Roads ACT head Tony Gill conceded that the surface would only last 15 years. Yet he also revealed that the Canberra road resealing program is based on a 20-year cycle. So we are on an unsustainable downward cycle?

Many of us have suspected the ACT Government is allowing Canberra's urban assets to gradually run down, and here was confirmation our suspicions are correct.

The ACT's ALP government needs to put an immediate halt to use of this unacceptable road surface on anything other than rural roads. Or the Liberals and Greens need to call them to account on it. This is a city - not a rural backwater.