Public Transport

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:33): When you represent an outer suburban electorate of the city, transport becomes a very important issue, particularly commuter transport. It is certainly something that is regularly raised with me as I doorknock, phone people and meet people across my electorate. In turn, I raise a few issues with Minister for Transport and his office from time to time.

Of the different transport systems, public transport is very important, in particular rail transport in my electorate. We are very fortunate in the Kaurna electorate to have the benefit of the Seaford rail extension and the Seaford line electrification, delivered by this government and opened about 3½ years ago. It is a very popular service, and it has increased not only the number of people catching the service but also the convenience for people from the outer suburbs and, in fact, even all the way down to Victor Harbor. When I am at the train station at Seaford.

I regularly meet people who have driven from Victor Harbor to catch the train to make their way into town. It is much more efficient and effective for people to travel into town. Of course, the new electric trains provide really a very high level of service for residents. When I was catching the train home after the Showdown, two three-car sets were connected together—so six carriages altogether—and they were full of people, so it has the capacity to carry a huge number of people across the Seaford line once they are all connected together.

One of the issues in relation to rail service is always the timetable, and one of the issues regularly raised with me is getting more rail services in place, and this is something I have been lobbying the transport minister about for a long time. I was very delighted to see that the transport minister and the Treasurer have been able to deliver $22 million extra in this budget for rail services across the state. Of course, that will help the Seaford line, as well as the other lines. In particular, that money is going to go towards additional services for night-time and weekend services to increase the frequency of those services, and to increase the predictability for people when they are catching trains, so that they know that there will be one coming relatively soon.

Some of the issues that that will deal with are particularly when we have Mad March festival time in Adelaide. The night-time services from the city to Seaford are very busy, and at the moment they are only one hour apart. This will go a long way to addressing that need. It is also an issue even if you are working late at night in the city or if you want to catch up with somebody after work, that suddenly you can be very quickly put onto an hourly schedule for trains, and we are looking to address that. Also, we want to improve the predictability and regularity on the weekend for people who want to come into the city or to get out to the beach at Seaford. That is very important for the Seaford line and it has been very well received by people in my electorate.

A number of other issues come up from time to time. Because it is so popular, we have seen that the Seaford station park-and-ride gets very busy and very full in the mornings. From some recent correspondence from the minister, I understand that work is now being done to look at how we can improve the popularity of the Seaford Meadows station, where the car park is nowhere near as full in the mornings, including potentially investigating some stair options, rather than the significant ramp, as well as some other promotional material that could encourage people to use that station instead of the other Seaford station, which is very full and very landlocked and where there is not much room to extend the park-and-ride.

Obviously, there are always issues in terms of interchanges with the connections of buses and trains, and that is another issue we are constantly working on and I am raising with the department. I also appreciate that a lot of work has been done on some of the unsafe pedestrian crossings along the Seaford line to address removing some of the unsafe crossings and upgrading some of the others. All that work will have improvements in terms of the timetable as well because it will mean that the trains will have fewer places where they need to slow down along the journey between the city and Seaford.

We have also announced a ticketed station at Noarlunga, which will be an improvement in terms of security, and there are also significant security staff who work at those stations. Wi-fi on our trains will also have a very positive impact and I congratulate the minister on that.