By Catherine Carter
DESPITE our desire to be greener, most of us in Canberra find there is no practical alternative to the car for many of our journeys.
Currently around 87 per cent of Canberrans choose their car as their primary mode of transport, which leaves around 13 per cent walking, cycling and catching ACTION buses. And, despite recent initiatives to encourage more people to catch buses, there has been little or no shift towards public transport.
A community with effective transport infrastructure, where visitors, workers and residents can get to wherever they want to go easily and efficiently, is a vibrant organism, healthy across all its parts.
A community where certain areas are hard to reach, or hard to leave is potentially a community with ailing or dead areas. It is a community with parts that can’t stay awake after dark or on weekends; where deserted sectors become no-go areas; where business shuns the too-hard areas; where the quality of lifestyle is patchy at best.
In a submission to the ACT Legislative Assembly Standing Committee inquiry into ACTION buses in 2007, the Property Council recommended an integrated transport strategy. And any integrated strategy must look at where the people are, where they will be in future, where they want to go and the method they want to use to get there.
This brings me to the proposal for a light rail system. It seems obvious that such a proposal is enormously attractive. But even if it does attract Federal funding and ends up happening, it is unlikely to provide a complete solution to our transport woes.
We need to consider what the community really wants, not just what it thinks it ought to want. This doesn’t mean we abandon attempts to provide viable public transport, but it does mean an integrated transport plan should include better linkages between public transport and park-and-ride options. And public transport rides to work and service centres should be affordable and frequent.
People will still want to use their cars, so car parking has to be part of the mix, and the continuing problems with car parking in Civic, the town centres and the Barton/Parkes area really does need urgent attention.
There is a crucial need for an integrated transport plan for Canberra. Such a plan will ensure the healthy circulation of life-blood of our community – our people.

Catherine Carter is executive director of the Property Council of Australia (ACT).