A couple of years ago, a friend of mine had a visitor from New Jersey staying with her. She was an intrepid young lass - I'll call her Susan - doing some travel in between finishing college and starting a job. My busy friend, instead of driving her around to the war memorial and the national gallery, just gave her a MyWay card and sent her off on the Canberra buses.
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We're pretty good at the cultural cringe here in Australia, so you're probably thinking I'm about to say how pitiful Susan found the contrast between our public transport system and the New Jersey Transit system she'd grown up with. You would be wrong. "Your buses are so good!"
Susan loved the MyWay card that made it so much quicker for people to get on and off. She loved the screen at the front telling her what stops were coming up. She loved the real-time NextBus information on her phone. She loved the quaint way we all thank the bus driver as we hop off.
Believe it or not, by world standards Canberra buses are pretty up-to-date in their technology - and will be even more so as the electric ones start to come into service. What badly needs modernising, though, is the level of workplace flexibility for drivers.
The current enterprise agreement doesn't reflect the trend, made more pronounced by COVID, of recognising the value of offering varied working hours for staff. Monday to Friday work is mandatory for permanent drivers. This leaves weekend driving either to casuals or to those who are prepared to take a sixth shift.
This has a direct flow-on effect to another element that needs modernising - the percentage of women drivers operating our transit fleet. I was horrified to see that the national average is a not-very-feminist 13 per cent. Our participation rate is even worse at 10.7 per cent. Transport Canberra has recognised the problem and is working on it.
Statistically, inflexible work hours are more likely to discourage women than men, because women are more likely to have caring responsibilities and more likely to want part-time work. But it's a real barrier to entry for all.
Victoria has a detailed Women in Transport program and strategy which includes a target for a 10 per cent increase every year in women drivers by the end of 2024. We need a similar program here in the ACT. We also need to introduce greater flexibility in working hours as a first step. We need more frequent services, but the inflexible working hours for drivers are making this impossible. There simply aren't enough drivers, especially for weekends.
Canberra bus trips aren't like that now, but only 4.6 per cent of all journeys were taken by bus according to the ACT and Queanbeyan-Palerang Household Travel Survey conducted in 2017. A big reason is they just don't come often enough. How many Canberrans are prepared to roll the dice on the once-every-two-hours frequency of a Sunday afternoon? In contrast, the light rail comes every five minutes in weekday peak periods. It has no trouble attracting passengers.
I'm passionate about public transport as a way of lowering emissions and easing traffic congestion. As the challenges of COVID hopefully begin to ebb, I'd like to see us build Canberra's future public transport success - with flexible driver rosters, more women behind the wheel and a weekend timetable that works.
I'm putting a motion to the Legislative Assembly next week that will get these wheels turning.
- Jo Clay is a member for Ginninderra in the ACT Legislative Assembly. She is the ACT Greens spokesperson for transport and women.
