Thomas Emerson is leader of Independents for Canberra and candidate for Kurrajong.
We need MLAs who focus less on announceables and more on deliverables.
There’s plenty of pretty pictures and compelling language in the ACT Government’s latest transport infrastructure glossy, released today.
I agree wholeheartedly with the rhetoric; we need more transport options for our growing population, particularly when it comes to public and active transport. We remain far too car-dependent as a city, which is bad for our health, bad for our wallets, and bad for the climate. Like most people I’m meeting on the campaign trail, I’d love to see the government’s rhetoric matched by action.
In the 2012 election campaign, ACT Labor “committed to increasing the public transport share of all work trips to 10.5 per cent by 2016 and 16 per cent by 2026”.
12 years on, and we’re still waiting.
A year before that commitment was made, 6.6 per cent of Canberrans commuted to work using public transport. Ten years later, the proportion had dropped to 6 per cent.
ACT Labor told us in 2013 that Parkes Way was to be partially tunnelled to connect the city to the lake. Today’s glossy shows a ‘Parkes Way Corridor Plan’ is now being developed wherein “treatment options will be considered” to improve “cohesiveness between the city and the lake”. This project is shown on a 15-20+ year forward timeline.
The ambitious city-to-lake plan from over a decade ago seems to have fallen off the face of the planet.
Light rail to Woden was promised in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Today’s brochure, released more than eight years later, celebrates $100 million in federal and territory funding for planning to get light rail across the lake and down to Woden.
$100 million to be spent before a sod is turned!
The Garden City Cycleway also features in this glossy – a great project now being delivered 20 years after having been identified as a ‘priority’ by the ACT Government.
In the meantime, Canberra has been ranked the least walkable major city in Australia.
Many of the plans announced over the last 12 years by this Labor-Greens coalition government have been laudable, even exciting. They’re worthless to our community until they’re funded and implemented.
While we’re kept waiting, people are becoming more and more cynical about politics. I’m hearing from Canberrans who’ve simply stopped listening to the announcements; they just don’t believe any of the government’s promises anymore.
It’s great for the ACT to have an ambitious transport infrastructure plan. But how many times can the same plans be used for political announcements before they’re actually delivered?
