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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Public Transport

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:29): I absolutely love public transport, and I also love delivering community wins for locals in my electorate, and so what I love even more is when community wins combine with public transport. I have three of those in my electorate. I will start with community win one, and that is in relation to bus stop K1 on Hutt Street. It is at the corner of Hutt Street and South Terrace.

I was down there late last year talking to locals about my $3 million investment in Hutt Street to improve the entrance statement to this beloved main street in my community, and a couple of locals raised the issue of buses idling at the K1 bus stop. The reason that buses do this is to ensure that they are on track with the current schedule. Buses that may be running ahead of time will wait at that particular bus stop and idle there to make sure that the bus is then aligned with the timetable and move on. Unfortunately, some new residents coming into a new apartment building in the area were being impacted by the buses idling at bus stop K1.

It is known as a time point, and so I advocated on behalf of my local community to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport to see if we could move the time point of that particular bus stop to a better location. I was absolutely thrilled to be able to deliver this community win for my local area. We were able to move the time point further south, across South Terrace and down to Hutt Road, away from local residents, to really improve the amenity for local residents in that area. We have 1,000 of these time points across the Adelaide Metro network, and the department is always looking to review them to make sure they are in the best location. I am very pleased to have been able to deliver that outcome for our local community.

Community win two is in relation to bus stop V1, also on Hutt Street, a bit further down. Again, I had been talking to local residents about our free city connector, which is something that I am absolutely a huge supporter of, but they mentioned that there was a large distance between two of the city connector's bus stops along Hutt Street and East Terrace. It was about a 700 to 800-metre distance.

The free city connector is so important for people in our community to be able to get to services and to access their social networks, but in particular to do their grocery shopping. Particularly in instances of extreme heat or wet weather, having to walk those long distances to access the free city connector, particularly if you are carrying groceries home, was something that was raised as a bit of an issue for my local community.

I was very proud to launch a campaign to advocate for an additional bus stop for the free city connector along Hutt Street, and I was thrilled to be able to inform my community just last week that we will undertake a three-month trial of bus stop V1 as a dedicated stop on the free city connector's route. That starts on Monday 12 February, so it is a bit of an early Valentine's Day present for my local community. I am urging them to come on down to support that particular bus stop on the free city connector route. Let's really lock that in as a bus stop for our free city commuters.

Now community win three:12 months ago, in this very chamber, I was able to invite in a young woman by the name of Cassie Hames. Cassie is legally blind and I invited her into the parliament because I wanted to hear all about an idea that she had to make our public transport system more accessible and inclusive. That idea was called the See Me App. It was really designed for people who had low vision or were vision impaired to give them more confidence to be able to catch public transport.

I was a huge supporter of this idea. I was blown away by its simplicity but also what a huge impact it would have on people catching public transport, so I made sure I advocated to our Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Tom Koutsantonis, to get behind this idea, which his department did. Just last week, we were able to announce that we are undertaking a six-month trial on the free city connector 99A and 99C of Cassie's app.

Basically, it alerts the bus driver that you are waiting at the upcoming bus stop. When you are on the bus, it alerts the driver to when you want to get off. So you have that confidence that the bus is coming, it is going to stop, you are going to be able to get on it and then, when you are on it, you know you are going to be able to get to your destination and get off safely.

They are three community wins in my electorate that I am just so excited to be able to announce and I thank all the locals who helped me in advocating for them.

Mrs HURN: I draw your attention to the state of the house.

The SPEAKER: My attention has been drawn to the state of the house. A quorum is not present, ring the bells.

A quorum having been formed:

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