VOCAL LOCAL

Dear Editor,

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I AM a bicycle rider and very happy to see that provision has been made in the 25-year road plan for additional standalone bike paths – this will hopefully encourage more people to ride, and, as well as getting lard off, will hopefully reduce vehicle numbers and reduce noise and pollution, etc.

Another way to reduce vehicle numbers is to improve public transport. The established “cop out” is that Cairns residents are rusted on car users and will never forsake their vehicles, but I am not aware of any serious trials to try challenge this theory. Options to try include:

• Pensioners travel free at all times;

• No charge if passengers board the bus before 9am (and pay for their return trip);

• Create a car park at Smithfield and allow those drivers who park there to have free travel on buses to Cairns;

• $2 flat rate charge to get onto a bus at any time;

• Use smaller buses and run them more frequently whilst retaining the big buses for peak times;

• Have a serious program to replace the rest of the diesel buses with battery buses which would be quieter for both passengers and the general public.

It seems that Government can easily find hundreds of millions of dollars for roads but cannot find funding to make public transport more user-friendly.

Even if there is only a 5 per cent increase in use of public transport then there would probably be a noticeable drop in vehicles on the roads of Cairns.

My question is - when will State Government step outside the box and seriously explore options to make public transport in Cairns more attractive to the general public?