A spokeswoman for Transport Minister Meegan Fitzharris said the light rail vehicle was towed from the depot to a stabling location between Cape Street and Antill Street on Northbourne Avenue between 10pm and midnight on Wednesday night.

However the vehicle will remain parked until dynamic testing begins later this month.

The vehicle will be fenced off for safety reasons, with security on site overnight.

Ms Fitzharris told annual reports hearings on Thursday the arrival of the tram onto Northbourne Avenue was an example of the significant progress of the project, which is now expected to begin operating in 2019.

The minister was grilled on the operational commencement date, which was recently pushed back from December 21.

"I have said that I would expect it would be in the first quarter but we don’t have a date yet," Ms Fitzharris said.

She said the government had already begun to plan the launch day, which would be their focus for the next few months.

"There’s a huge amount of interest right along the route for businesses to participate in that," Ms Fitzharris said.

Ms Fitzharris also said the government was currently considering whether light rail and the new bus network would go live at the same point, or if there would be a staged rollout.

While the bus network was "somewhat entirely within our control", the light rail commencement date hinged on Canberra Metro and third-party rail accreditation, she said.

However she said starting the new bus timetable on the first day of term next year was "highly preferable".

"I do want to give certainty on the start of the bus network particularly as I’ve said before to school communities in the next three to four weeks," Ms Fitzharris said.

Transport Canberra deputy director-general Duncan Edghill also rejected concerns about the cancellation of bus routes through the Australian National University campus, saying only a minority of passengers used the number 3 bus route compared to other buses that serviced the edges of the campus.

"There’s perceptions and then there’s data and what the data is telling us is the vast, vast, vast majority, like over 90 per cent, of people at ANU are actually using the services that service the border of the campus," Mr Edghill said.

"I think our view with the ANU is by dent of geography it will be in the new network one of the most well-serviced universities and places in Canberra."

Mr Edghill also weighed in on the report from the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories on stage two of the project, which indicated it will be more complicated to get federal approval if the ACT government pursues its chosen route.

The deputy director-general said they were "generally pretty happy with it" because it clearly defined the areas in which the light rail would be required to run wire-free.

While the government had planned for wire-free running over Commonwealth Avenue to Adelaide Avenue, the committee recommended it be taken way further, down to Kent Street in Deakin.

That has presented some operational challenges that Transport Canberra director-general Emma Thomas said they were speaking to the light rail vehicle manufacturer to overcome.

"[Our consideration is] whether it would force us to have extra stops to allow it to charge in time, there’s a slight sort of hill from my memory of that area, it puts the light rail vehicle under a bigger pressure so we're actually going through a task with the light rail manufacturer to try and understand the capability a little bit better,"  Ms Thomas said.

Ms Fitzharris said they were still doing what they could on the light rail stage two business case while waiting for the federal government to respond to the committee's report.

"Obviously we're also looking through the recommendations of the report and considering what it means for our preferred route and our timeframes," she said.

"We do know that one of the significant processes we need to go through is approval under the EPBC Act so we are preparing for that."