Active Transport

Here in Canberra we have our own transport white elephant. An unnecessary tramway is being installed to show how cool and traveller friendly we are. Stage 1 is complete, it will take another 5 years to put in 2 or so more stops. Ultimately it will reach my town centre, turning a ten minute express bus trip to the city into a crowded 30 minute tram ride. In the meantime they have been decimating bus services in terms of frequency and locations of bus stops, applying a hub and spoke transport model that applies well to a mega city like London, but poorly to a sparsely populated but widely dispersed city like Canberra. In the name of “Active Transport” 15 minutes is the new acceptable walk distance to a bus stop, bad luck if you have disabilities or are elderly.

Which is a very long winded way of saying that the “temporary” bus interchange I now walk an additional three blocks to has recently celebrated its anniversary with some public art.

This was my favourite, itself a celebration of Active Transport. The occasional bus is capable of carrying 1 or 2 bikes.