GCC Community Meeting 14 June 2017 (Forde Community Centre 6:30 – 8:30 pm)
Chair: Henley Samuels (Vice-president).
Attendees: see attendance log
Agenda item 1: David Matthews – Transport Canberra – Review of Gungahlin Bus Services
David Matthews provided a slide presentation (available on website) on Gungahlin bus services. Of note were:
- Current usage – High level of usage along Flemington road, route 200 most popular whilst route 255 experiencing greatest growth
- Bus services affect 12-15 minutes by road works
- expansion of rapid services including green (Woden to city) and Black (Gungahlin to Belconnen) which is due to start in the second half of 2017.
- Transport Canberra planned to make minor timetable adjustments in second half of 2017 to account for road work delays.
- Works currently underway for Gungahlin Place New bus interchange which is expected to be completed late January 2018. The city bound bus stop will move from its temporary position back to Hibberson Street in August 2017 before moving to its final place in Gungahlin place when the new interchange opens.
Questions asked, and responses were as follows:
- When could new suburbs (Moncrief, Taylor and Jacka) expect services. Response was fleet is at capacity with only limited opportunity to introduce changes in second half 2017. More opportunity existed in 2018.
- Concern about park and rides ( number of spots, proximity and permanency) – taken on notice
- Concern about level of consultation with the new bus terminal and works on Hibberson st – taken on notice
- What services will be removed when light rail commences and how will TC mitigate impacts will arise. – buses need to provide the services to connect LR and increase patronage. Light rail will free up 1.2 million kilometres. There are also 80 new buses being procured.
- Gizzard to valley avenue is extremely busy – us in traffic controllers
- Status of electric bus trial – out to tender for second time – announcement expected very shortly.
- Movement of driver respite on top of Anthony Rolfe – TC is looking for alternatives.
- Connection of Casey market town – TC is examining how this could be done.
- Time frame for when bus routes integrate into light rail – begin community consultation before end of 2017 and into early 2018 for substantial network changes to occur once light rail is operational.
- Election commitment for a trial bus from Gungahlin to Tuggeranong – Currently no spare capacity in fleet. Earliest opportunity will be in Second half of 2017. Need to understand from community demand more.
Agenda item 2: Senator the Hon. Zed Selselja – Relocation of Commonwealth agency to Gungahlin
Zed updated the council on his election commitment to relocate small to medium agency (between 300-600 staff) from the Parliamentary triangle to Gungahlin. This was a frustratingly slow process, the agency had been identified but couldn’t be announced. Department of Finance was currently consulting with the agency’s senior management. Expecting after internal processes are complete a procurement process will commence in second half of 2017 for office space in Gungahlin. Given the Commonwealth tends to sign reasonably long leases he expected this would be a long term arrangement.
Question was asked about the lack of infrastructure spending in Canberra. Zed highlighted Barton highway and Monaro highway are important infrastructure projects. The .$500 public service modernisation fund would involve expenditure in Canberra on ICT and infrastructure. Also massive increase in health spending in CBR from health budget.
Agenda item 3: CSIRO Land development
CSIRO announced it anticipated first land sales to occur 2021-2022. They have completed ecological studies which are now available on their web site and have listed additional buffers zones (200 out of 700 hectares) for preservation. Site will be an overall net negative carbon emitter. 10% of dwellings will be affordable housing
Currently conducting stock take of CSIRO skills to develop a science plan on how to use Ginninderra site as a lab for future urban development. Plans to pass on expertise to ACT government. Planned timeframes for the CSIRO’s release have been communicated to the ACT government
Agenda item 4: ACTEWAGL
ACTEWAGL presented on a number of recent faults that had blacked out significant parts of Gungahlin at peak times. Gungahlin’s network includes overhead (mainly on feeders getting to suburbs) and underground (more reliable but harder to identify and repair faults). The recent faults has arisen because of:
- Equipment failure – one occurrence
- Network damage from a third party
- Fault in one of the switch gears
- Network protection faults – two
- Damage next to primary school – was a planned outage which they deferred till 2200
He noted that power might go on and off when switching network load
ACTEWAGL has fixed the faults and put on hold capital upgrades at centre hub until end of winter period which means they have redundancy and would reduce the number of households impacted should something happen. Will start community consultation in July on 5 year maintenance plan.
Questions and responses included:
- Is Gungahlin’s network collapsing or are these random – average across Canberra is very good. Gungahlin is performing well except for past 6 weeks
- Question about quality of cables – Mixed depending on age. Some cables 25 years old – 50% through life span
- Feedback that ACTEWAGL did not use social media as well as they could in network outages. ACTEWGL agreed that information provided could have been more honest and more direct. Ngunnawal outage could have been handled better
- Compensation for lack of services, particularly for appliances damaged during random on and off sending power down lines. Not required to provide compensation
- Investigating bring in more feeders – annual planning report looks into future load growth. As Gungahlin grows need to strengthen network
- Objections to price rises – invited to provide feedback to ACTEWAGL forums.
- Why were prices rising when ACT government was signing fixed price renewable energy contracts? – not able to answer
Minutes taken by Andrew Braddock