No, I'm not being arrogant and dismissive. Any sort of infrastructure improvements are a bonus to any city.
So long as they are properly managed, introduced and integrated.
It is not a blanket "well it's new so therefore it's better" and you know that. It is also not an improvement if the entire transport project results in a net detriment as this one has.
I'm sorry, but surely I'm allowed to form a proper opinion considering future planning of the extension of this system?
Yeh, sure, it doesn't service much of the current population. It's just the first stage of what is planned to be a much larger light rail system.
You're more than entitled to an opinion. But how can you form a proper opinion when you're ignoring the actual facts about the problems with it? What makes you think you know more than the ACT residents about it? Once again, it is not, and never is, a case of "well it's new so therefore it's better".
It's not going to be "much" larger. It's going to extend to Mawson, the airport and Belconnen. But like I've already said, the light rail is not the issue in and of itself. The issue is the absolute abortion of a transport system they have created alongside it.
We won't know until it is finished. It has to be better surely, than the crap transport system that Canberra already has. Gunghalin is a huge growth area. Is it not better to develop infrastructure like this before it is too late?
But it isn't better, because the new transport plan has severely reduced public transport options. A shiny new tram doesn't paper over that.
Take my suburb. It is one of the largest in Canberra and right now is served by five bus routes. Admittedly, that's probably not necessary, especially when two of them run almost the same route.
However, that will be cut to ONE under the new transport plan. One bus route that runs along a road 1.5km walk from the furthest north end of the suburb. Great for the elderly, or small kids, wouldn't you agree?
School routes have taken an even bigger hit. The local primary now has one school route...or a near enough to 1km walk to the local service to Woden or Erindale/Tuggeranong. Perfect for 6 year old kids.
Gungahlin is growing, although it's slowed a bit with the developments out near Weston. But the families are shifting into Woden and Tuggeranong Valleys and Inner Weston, the areas that have no light rail coverage and have suffered the most in terms of bus routes.
Yes, I'm a big infrastructure fan. This system may not benefit everyone at the moment, but it's a start. It's CERTAINLY not the debacle you make it out to be.
But it is a debacle for the foreseeable future, when you take the entire plan into account. Because they have applied a plan meant for the finished product before we even have a fixed end date for the project! The light rail itself is not the issue, it's the fact that once again the ACT govt has utterly f**ked an infrastructure project. This is not a light rail in isolation, it's a complete public transport plan for a rapidly growing city. Can you honestly not separate that from the trams as one part of the project?
It leaves much of the city with significantly reduced public transport options. On top of that, it is currently not planned to go further south than Mawson unless they add to the plan after the current final stage, which is 15km from the centre of Banks, the southernmost suburb. It is also not planned to go to Weston or any of the new developments out that way
Now, obviously they could and probably might add to the network, but given we're at stage one of four (and several of those stages have stages themselves) that will take, what, a decade? Maybe more given the corridors aren't as easy to modify as Northbourne/Flemington Aves. In the meantime that means 50% of the population or more have significantly reduced options for public transport, ESPECIALLY school services which have been gutted.
That means more cars on the road, not less. Especially Southside, which the government consistently neglects in more ways than just their half-cocked transport plan. More cars on arterial roads that will inevitably be less capable of dealing with the traffic because of the light rail.
It's a clusterf**k, mate. They have gone off early and disadvantaged easily three or four times as many people as they have helped with the light rail itself.
