Mr BAYLEY question to MINISTER for INFRASTRUCTURE and TRANSPORT, Mr VINCENT
[10.49 a.m.]
The Greens welcomed you taking up our policy to make public transport free to help Tasmanians struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. It’s already having an impact, with 5000 more passengers recorded on just the first day and every traveller saving by riding for free, but we all know this crisis won’t be over by July when fare-free travel ends. People will continue to need support. Free or half-price fares is a policy the government keeps pulling out of your back pocket on an ad hoc basis for short-term relief, yet despite encouraging results, you’ve never properly evaluated its impacts. Will you treat this period of free public transport as a trial, formally collect and evaluate data to inform the costs and benefits of free public transport and look to including it as a permanent measure?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the honourable member very much for the question. The answer to most of that is yes, we are doing an enormous amount of evaluation on it. With the present system we are using a manual system with bus drivers at Metro. We still have to add the figures from Kinetic and Tassielink into those analyses, but we are getting a very good understanding of where the people are moving from and to. To give an example, the Premier mentioned we are up to about a 30 per cent increase as of yesterday morning on the general services as a broad figure around the state. Launceston is a little bit higher, followed by Burnie and then Hobart. On the public holidays during Easter, we actually saw a 70 per cent increase on Easter Monday and Tuesday with people moving around. We are collecting a lot of data.
Yesterday I announced the first stage of finetuning the timetable for the Greater Hobart Bus Network. It was built on a system that is virtually 10 years old now, and with a lot of different traffic flows affecting the way the buses move now, the timetable was adjusted by small amounts to take in the actual travel time. That is the first step before we move to public consultation later on in the year, which will look at how we move people around the Hobart corridors in a more efficient, reliable and sustainable way. The numbers that are increasing at the moment are giving us real-time figures on the sorts of areas and the volumes of people we move from various suburbs in and out of the city, whether it’s for medical, pleasure, work or recreation. Those numbers will continue to be collated. They will also play into how we assess the necessary part of whether we continue into the budget process the free travel at all. We are doing that on a daily basis now with regular updates.
Supplementary Question
Mr BAYLEY – Thank you, minister, for that answer, and we did note the announcement yesterday in terms of further refinement of bus routes and additional runs. In terms of this evaluation, will it be formal and will it be publicly released as a measure that we can all collectively look at? Also, will you commit to not only looking at the numbers of people travelling but also elements such as antisocial behaviour and boarding and disembarking speeds, which we know are benefits of free public transport, so will that be looked into? And –
The SPEAKER – Your time has expired. I remind members that the questions should be directly relevant to the answer and the previous question so the minister can add further to his information.
Mr VINCENT – Thank you, Speaker. My answer to that is yes, we will be open and transparent about those figures. It’s something that is passionate to all of us about having a decent public transport system that continues to meet the needs. We have been very open and excited about the increase in numbers because it allows us to actually see what public transport can do if we get all the measures right. With the new CEO there, we are measuring everything possible to make sure we deliver efficiently and on time. You will see those figures become available and, as I said, public consultation into stage 2 of improvements to the Greater Hobart transport network will be open for everybody to participate in later on in the year
