A two-year, federal government project, to upgrade the Commonwealth Avenue bridge is now heralding a big downgrade in bus travel for in Canberra's north-west. The ACT government says its new bus timetable won’t take effect until February, and aims to ensure reliability during construction, but some residents say they're already back behind the wheel for good.
00:00Lachlan Butler hasn't much enjoyed his weekday bus commute from Dunlop to Parks since MyWay Plus was introduced.
00:09But he says significant changes to the timetable from February 2 make it completely unworkable.
00:16I'm definitely driving because an hour on a rapid I could tolerate just however long it's going to take with two buses, the layover in between.
00:26The ACT Government says the update is necessary to ensure a reliable network during the National Capital Authority's work on the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge.
00:35With the construction delays we see some minutes coming out of the network, those delays then need to be spread across the network.
00:42Mr Butler expects some changes to be more problematic than others.
00:46Like the Rapid 2 and 3 which will become local buses within Belconnen.
00:51While the Rapid 2 and 4 will arrive every 15 minutes instead of every 10.
00:56West Belconnen has been sacrificed to try and beef up the rest of the network.
01:00ABC Radio Canberra has heard plenty of similar concerns.
01:05It makes absolutely no sense to terminate the R2 and R3 at Belconnen interchange.
01:10They already have a large number of passengers heading to and from Western Belconnen on them.
01:15I will have to wait at Belconnen interchange for heaven knows how long.
01:19This is problematic especially in the evenings.
01:21Looks like it's back to the car for me.
01:23We'll run the bus network for a couple of months.
01:27Then build a new network with actual travel time data.
01:30They're going to have to rethink it because what they've put forward isn't going to work.
01:35Detailed timetables will be released in early January.
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