00:00Electric vehicle owner York Stanham reckons getting the bus from his home in Belconnen
00:07to his office in Fishwick takes far too long.
00:10I can get to work much quicker driving.
00:13To put that to the test, I took the same journey by bus.
00:18He starts work at 8am, so I needed to leave a lot earlier.
00:23While I was waiting for the bus, at home, York is starting his day.
00:30The first bus arrived while York's making his breakfast.
00:33The bus was bound for the Belconnen town centre.
00:36There I had to change buses.
00:43I was inside the Parliamentary Triangle around the time York starts his journey to work.
00:49Traffic isn't too bad at this time of the morning.
00:52My bus ride ends on Canberra Avenue, and then I had to walk for around a kilometre
00:57to get to York's office, and I was still walking as he arrives.
01:04The bus ride was pretty relaxed.
01:06I only had to change one time, but there was a pretty long walk at the end of it, and obviously
01:10it took a lot longer.
01:11But it's not just the time that it takes that has many Canberrans second-guessing using
01:16public transport.
01:17You can't leave the office easily during the day.
01:20If I had something on after work, an appointment somewhere, if I had to get the bus there and
01:24then get the bus home afterwards, you're looking to get home at 7, 8pm.
01:29Public transport proponents point to lower costs and a healthier lifestyle, not to mention
01:34the reduced environmental impact.
01:37But the ACT is the leading Australian jurisdiction for uptake of electric vehicles.
01:42And for the near future, the car is expected to remain king.
01:47Many of the trips that occur on our roads are for business purposes, there's people
01:50delivering goods and services, and therefore they need a car, and families rely on their
01:56car to get kids to school and home, to do the shopping.
01:59Sawmore rose the solution to speeding up and simplifying journeys.
02:04Economists who've studied the road system in the United States say no.
02:09Research has found duplicating or building new roads just creates new drivers, and congestion
02:15remains unchanged.
02:16And we saw that when you added highways, then in pretty short order you saw the increase
02:21in traffic.
02:22And this has already happened in Canberra.
02:24Several major Gungahlin roads have been duplicated in the past few years, but many drivers say
02:30getting in or out of their suburbs can be a major headache.
02:34During peak hour is pretty locked down, yeah, it's pretty hard, it adds about 20 minutes
02:40to my commute.
02:41Roads are not wide enough, the traffic doesn't flow, it's horrendous.
02:45It doesn't bother me, I've been in other cities where the traffic is much worse.
02:51Public transport is often spruced as a congestion buster.
02:54The Climate Council says just over 3% of journeys in Canberra are by shared transport like buses,
03:01the lowest rate of any capital city in the country.
03:04If elected, the ACT's major parties are all promising more buses to provide more frequent
03:10services.
03:11With Labor and the Greens also committed to extending light rail to Woden, a route liberals
03:16say will be too costly and result in a slower journey.
03:21Professor Turner says the US study found additional public transport has the same impact on congestion
03:28as building more roads.
03:29If you take some people off the roads to ride bus rapid transit or a light rail system,
03:36that's just like freeing up capacity and so you expect the same sort of response.
03:41Professor Turner says the only proven solution to congestion is charging congestion fees
03:46for people to drive in certain areas of cities.
03:49But reducing the need for travel in the first place by providing office space and services
03:54in suburban areas is another option to ease or eliminate daily commutes.
04:00We estimated that if you double the density that people live and work at, you decrease
04:05the amount that each person drives by about a twelfth.
04:08But you pack twice as many people in each space so you have a lot more travel going
04:12on in those little spaces.
04:15Transport policies intrinsically linked to planning when considering the future of getting
04:19around the city.
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