Queanbeyan, Googong and Tralee will receive the lion's share of 90 new additional weekly bus services from Monday, January 23 in response to the demand for better public transport connectivity between the NSW border town and the ACT.
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Transport for NSW has promised more frequent buses and new weekend services, with the improved network run by contractor CDC, part of the huge ComfortDelGro Group, recently rebranded from QCity Transit.
A memorandum of understanding was signed two years ago between ACT and NSW to hammer out details on improved regional collaboration on shared issued such as health and transport however, the overarching steering committee, which is supposed to examine these issues, still has not been formed.
The ACT government, in response, said there had been "ongoing engagement" since 2020.
With thousands of people living in the Queanbeyan region and working in the ACT, the improved connectivity arrives at a time when the NSW government is seeking public input into its new draft South East and Tablelands Regional Transport Plan.
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Transport services within nine shire council areas are wrapped within the draft plan, including Goulburn-Mulwaree, Queanbeyan-Palerang, Upper Lachlan, Snowy-Monaro and the Eurobodalla on the South Coast.
One of the important new elements to the new CDC bus timetabling is the inclusion of the fast-growing South Jerrabomberra/Tralee area behind Hume, where the Village Building Company land release will see 1500 new homes and around 5000 residents move in within the next two years.
However, people living in Tralee and using the new service will still need to catch two buses to get to the ACT, with the loop service only connecting the new suburb to the Queanbeyan Interchange.
Googong, another of the fastest-growing regional suburbs, will get a new service called the 840X on weekdays. The earliest of these services will leave the village at 7.17am and travel via Barton and Russell, finally dropping passengers into the Canberra city interchange in a little under an hour later.
A Bungendore to Canberra express and a Yass to Canberra service via the Canberra Hospital is also part of the new scheduling starting Monday.
The proper integration of public transport networks between the ACT and the Queanbeyan area has ongoing issues, with incompatible ticketing systems being one of the biggest bugbears. CDC still uses a cash payment system for passengers while Transport Canberra has the card-reading MyWay system.
A 2021 analysis of ABS data by the Queanbeyan-Palerang council found that 65.8 per cent of people living over the border work in the ACT, including a significant proportion of defence personnel. Only just under 30 per cent of people who live in Queanbeyan-Palerang work there.
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