Gary, I haven't made any such offer to buy a single Mr Fluffy house.

My comments ("Single-level townhouses a sensible answer to the Mr Fluffy quandary", November23, p23) were really just to highlight that the government could have taken another path on Mr Fluffy. Rezoning the affected sites in RZ1 prior to a compulsory buy-back to encourage "sensible redevelopment" would have given owners the choice to demolish and redevelop themselves to stay in place, or to sell to a builder and move on.

David Shearer, Independent Property Group project planning director

I was surprised and disappointed with The Sunday Canberra Times' coverage of the Victorian state election on November 30. A meagre 29 lines on the bottom of page 4, outflanked by a number of trivial items, including one dealing with the news that the Murray cod fishery in the ACT had been reopened.

This is the paper that serves the nation's capital and Labor's victory in Victoria is historic, depriving a state government of a second term for the first time in more than 50 years. Would it be overly cynical to think Julie Bishop's half-page on page 3 on nuclear energy was timed to overshadow an embarrassing defeat for the Liberals, and that the Times fell so easily into this transparent strategy?

Michael Hermes, Ainslie

Your headlines "Mosque uproar" (November30, p1) and "Community split on mosque" (canberratimes. com.au) about the parking concerns of two Rivett shopkeepers, alert us to just one of the serious issues in Rivett.

An even bigger concern, and much more worthy of your front page, is Bangalay Crescent. As the result of bad government planning, it has divided our community from the beginning. Something should be done about it. I know a few people on the other side of Bangalay, and they are not all bad people.

Bill Hardie, Rivett

"Mosque uproar" shrieks the front page of Sunday's Canberra Times (November30).

"Residents lash Rivett proposal" cries the overline. But the "uproar" turns out to be two shopkeepers whose main concern is pressure on parking space. This kind of sensationalist presentation simply excites crackpots and stokes tensions in the community.

It also helps to explain why, increasingly, the media is so distrusted. The Canberra Times could usefully rediscover accuracy and its responsibility, as its former masthead said, "to serve the National City".

Peter Fuller, Chifley

A more pertinent headline for the piece about light rail in Canberra ("City bar owners give light rail thumbs up", November30, p10) would have been "CBD business owners want better public transport".

Light rail is years away. Even if it is built, it could easily end up with fewer services than now planned, just as evening and weekend bus services have recently been cut.

Better public transport could be achieved by increasing the number of bus services running. Night Rider buses on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights all year would be a good start. Buses that can get people to and from jobs other than nine-to-five public service ones would be reasonable.

Please, Canberra CBD Limited, lobby hard for better public transport for your customers and your workers now.

Ruth Wilson, Weetangera

I am a Canberra native, born and raised in the 2602 and I currently live in Melbourne.

I moved here to undertake a Master of Urban Planning and Environment at RMIT. I have two classes left and will graduate in June 2015. I have focused my study on transport and governance structures.

The ACT government has often trumpeted the wider-reaching benefits of light rail and its city-shaping ability, and with good reason. The ACT has a huge advantage over other Australian cities; the whole metropolitan region enjoys a central government, which fortuitously owns large portions of land along the corridor. This means much better co-ordination of various projects, like the Northbourne Avenue revitalisation/intensification, "City to the Lake" and Kingston foreshore projects. Canberra's unique governance structure (in Australia, at any rate) gives genuine credibility to claims of "wider benefits" as they can be controlled, steered and considered as several elements in an overarching plan, unlike Sydney2030 or Plan Melbourne; there is an ability to deliver.

It truly frustrates me when I read of people complaining that the ACT government is using light rail to increase the value of government-owned land along the corridor to then sell it off to developers. It boggles the mind that people complain that their government almost instantly begins making large financial returns from delivering public infrastructure.

To address the alternative of bus rapid transport: BRT is much cheaper; it can deliver about 80per cent of the per hour passenger capacity of light rail and for the same money as stage one of light rail; Canberra could likely build a larger BRT network reaching Woden and Belconnen.

So why is it worth spending more on light rail than BRT? Excluding the cost difference, often the first comment people make when promoting BRT over light rail is buses' flexibility. This notion truly misunderstands the purpose of mass transit. It is the surety of the route, and appeal of rail that encourages not just higher levels of patronage, but nodal development along the route in a way that far exceeds BRT's ability. Light rail creates more and further-reaching benefits that change the way the city grows and moves. Think of it as a symbiotic relationship.

Lastly, I am not anti-car, but a mono-centric transport system is vulnerable to change and the ACT has the highest car dependence of all major Australian cites. Dealing with congestion by building more roads becomes inane after a point, as you cannot fix congestion by encouraging people to drive more.

There is an ability to deliver, and a focused vision of what Canberra can be, that is lacking in most Australian cities.

Mitch Goodfellow, Melbourne

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attached file. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.

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