Glenn Bain, the Capital Metro Agency's director-general, said he does not want to be solely dependent on information shared with ACTION Buses on the likely take-up of the $640 million transport link.

According to that 74 per cent of Canberrans are more likely to use light rail than a bus, a figure he said indicates a significant likely increase in public transport patronage.

Mr Bain said an independent consultant had been engaged on Monday to ''do some alternate patronage modelling'' for CMA.

''[This is] just so we can get a bit of tension and a reality check, if you like, across the two systems that we currently use [to assess likely service use],'' he said on Tuesday.

Mr Bain was speaking at the ACT division of the Property Council of Australia luncheon on Tuesday.

The division has been critical of ACTION and sceptical about light rail, stating in its Centenary Declaration last Friday that the territory government needed to learn from its mistakes on the buses if light rail was to work in Canberra.

Asked what lessons his agency would be taking from ACTION, Mr Bain said it was not his place to comment on ''another area''.

''We're very much concerned with integrating with the current transport network, not criticising it,'' he said.

The light rail program was very real even though final decisions have not yet been made on the route, the type of technology or the carriages.

''The government is committed to work on the City to Gungahlin corridor being under way by 2016,'' Mr Bain said. ''The 2013-14 budget allocation is $18.7 million [with] $1.4 million to be spent on an ACT light rail master plan that will look at linking other community hubs and the airport.''

He also foreshadowed a 20 per cent jump in property values along the Gungahlin corridor, already one of the ACT's fastest growing areas, as a direct result of the light rail.

If this occurs in Canberra the ACT government will be the largest individual beneficiary. It holds 40 per cent of the land along the corridor.

Others are not so confident, saying there will not be an overnight windfall for property owners and warning careful thought had to be given to planning new developments.

Minter Ellison Lawyers partner, Cameron Charlton, who advised on the Gold Coast light rail network, warned against counting chickens in the egg.

''Don't be too ambitious about where new development happens, it is a progressive exercise over many, many years,'' he said.

''You need to pick where the developments are. [To benefit] you have to be within a 400-metre catchment of one of the major transport nodes [stops or stations]. You need to integrate land use with transit. In the United States there are some examples where they've gone for big box retail or car yards and those are just dead zones where there is no activity happening.''

Saxon Rose, a Deloitte Tax Services partner, said it would be naive to expect property values to soar overnight as a result of light rail.

''The rises are not instant,'' he said. ''They don't necessarily materialise for seven to nine years.''