PARKING WOES FOR MANDURAH RAIL LINE - Dr Dennis Jensen MP

Dr JENSEN (Tangney) (6:52 PM) —Through the middle of my electorate runs the main north-south Perth freeway and railway, an impressive project at first glance. The problem is that the government’s state ALP cohorts, in designing this rail project, considered only superficialities and not such fundamental issues as where the passengers would park their cars before boarding trains. Now we have a situation where a high-speed rail line whisks commuters from the suburbs to the CBD, but many of those commuters are forced to remain in their cars because of a lack of parking. Transport authorities say they should use feeder buses from their homes to rail stations, but this is obviously impractical for many, particularly families whose routine before and after work includes dropping off and picking up children from schools and childcare centres.

I am aware the new coalition state government is doing its best to remedy the problem, but where is the federal government’s much vaunted largess when it comes to fixing problems created by its own party colleagues? It is all very well to extend funding to a few feel-good projects, but when will they fix the critical flaws in existing projects created by their own party, which are causing massive inconvenience to tens of thousands of people every day?