The dumping of the dedicated busway to Belconnen by new Transport Minister John Hargreaves - despite some $5M already being spent on it - has dire consequences for Gungahlin.

 

With so few jobs being created in Gungahlin, most of us are forced to commute out, meaning a twice-daily battle with peak-hour traffic snarls, winding trips around back-streets and rat-runs, and expensive city parking charges.

Apart from a massive expansion in the employment base in Gungahlin, the only light on the horizon for us is the hope that someone in the ACT Government will reject the tired old line that "Canberra was designed for cars and public transport will never work" and will set out to build a quality public transport service.

Dedicated busways have proven very successful in places like Brisbane, and former Transport Minister Simon Corbell had the vision to make a start on the solution, with the plans for the dedicated Belconnen busway. But as soon as Hargreaves took over the portfolio, he shelved the busway and started uttering other similarly visionless comments such as "Bus lanes will not be built down the middle of Northbourne Avenue while I'm alive", even though that's precisely why there is the empty space down the middle of the trees there.

 

We have to ask: when will Minister Hargreaves realise that there is more to his transport portfolio than building more roads for more cars? Or will the transport portfolio remain a "vision vacuum" as long as Hargreaves holds the reins? And how much more expensive will the solutions eventually prove for all ACT taxpayers due to the delays he causes?