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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-22 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Lightsview

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (15:26): Just before I commence, I also want to acknowledge the Hon. Stephen Wade in the other place and thank him for his years of service, not the least of which was being health minister during a COVID pandemic. I know his work ethic during that period of time will stand him in good stead going forward and I want to thank him for his public service.

When I was first elected as the member for Enfield in 2019, one of the issues that kept coming up again and again was the issue of public transport in Lightsview, in particular the frequency of the local bus service for some 6,000 residents in that area. Lightsview is a relatively recent development. The concept was to have a modern cosmopolitan suburb close to the city with easy public transport access which in turn was to reduce the need for car ownership in the area, which was a great idea if we had adequate public transport in the area; and that is the issue that kept being raised with me and has been for the last three years.

Bus is the only option for people of Lightsview and there are only a few routes. The O-Bahn is the preferred route into the city but getting to the Klemzig interchange is the hardest part. The thing that shocked me when I first went in was the infrequency of the service. I had university students saying that if they missed the morning 206, they were not getting into town for university. They were forced to either walk to Hampstead Road, and if you know the area it is quite a walk. Maybe uni kids could do it but for seniors and people with disability that is asking too much.

In the last three years of my being the member for Enfield, and before that, we had a 206 bus route that only operated between 7am and 9.30am, with nothing during the day, and then 3.30pm until 7pm—again, nothing at night. We had no services on the weekends and we had no services on public holidays, which I found extraordinary.

Of course, we were not in government at that time in 2019, so I wrote to the transport minister, Stephan Knoll. I let him know that the public transport system through Lightsview did not meet the needs of that growing population. I suggested a few ways for services to be improved, and one of those options was revising the timetable to have the 206 bus route run throughout the day and on weekends and nights. I made suggestions about reliability of services, because I did get some feedback that even the buses that were running were not running on time or were being completely missed. There was a suggestion of an express service to the Klemzig Interchange as well.

I did not get very far at that point in time, so in 2020 I conducted a survey of the residents of Lightsview to see what it was they really wanted, and the overwhelming response was about the frequency of the bus services: that having them operate during the day and on weekends was critical.

I wrote again to then Minister Knoll, who initially did actually commit to the Go Zone in Lightsview but only as part of broader public transport reforms, which meant something like 1,000 bus stops being cut throughout metropolitan Adelaide. Of course that was scrapped, which meant that the Lightsview Go Zone was also scrapped as part of that.

I did not give up, and in December 2021 I started a petition called 'Demand Better Bus Services', which was signed by more than 700 people in my local area. I took up the cause again with the transport minister at that time, Minister Wingard, who proved to be not even as helpful as Minister Knoll. Unfortunately, the Marshall Liberal government refused to take action on Lightsview.

Given that I had campaigned on this issue for the past three years up until the last state election as a member of the opposition, I put it up as an election commitment, and I am very pleased that the then shadow transport minister, the member for West Torrens, was very supportive of this initiative. We made it an election commitment and we have been working on it ever since we got into government.

I am very pleased that on the weekend I was able to have two street-corner meetings and announce to my local residents that the Lightsview Go Zone was due to commence in July 2023. In a few months we will have public transport through Lightsview during the day, on weekends and at nights—which people are very happy about. I want to thank the Minister for Transport for getting that done.

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