Thursday, 22 February 2024

Preston electorate public transport

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (17:23): (546) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the action I seek is for the minister to join me in a visit to the Tyler Street and Plenty Road tram stop. As the minister will know, the tram stop is quite a famous one. It was the terminus of the original cable car route that ran from the city to Preston in the 1920s, and it was the terminus of the old 88 East Preston route for many years. As you might expect of a stop that was a longstanding terminus, there has been a lot of development around it over the years. There are a lot of shops where people would get their groceries when they got off the cable car or the tram. There is Preston Primary, St Mary’s church and a lot of our earlier housing, and in fact it remains what council call a neighbourhood activity centre today. In fact council have marked it as an area for more activity and densification. Unfortunately the history of the tram stop hit a bit of a bump in 2016 when the new E-class trams were introduced onto the 86 route. The E-class trams are of course safer, more accessible and more advanced than the B-class trams they replaced. But they are also 10 metres longer, and essentially they did not fit at the northbound Tyler Street stop. They would have stuck out into traffic, and there would have been issues with driver visibility and passenger safety.

One possible solution would have been to redesign the intersection, but those in charge at the time decided to adopt a different solution, which was just to cancel the northbound 52 stop. They removed the signs and reprogrammed the trams, and they now just roll straight past those shops, which is a large set of shops on Plenty Road. They do go past some connecting stops for buses, and they do go past a lot of houses. We have a 700-metre gap now, which is a larger gap than you would see anywhere going back to the city, and the confusing situation whereby trams do stop on their way south. So the stop still technically exists, but anyone who tries to get off on their way north finds that they cannot.

As I said, these decisions were made a long time ago, and there would be considerable work to do across portfolios to fully understand them and to understand any potential remedies. But we are just hoping that the minister can come out to have a chat about a transport plan for the area more broadly. It is an area with a lot of new businesses, which is great. It is an area with new families. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the area for active and public transport, and we are hoping to have a chat with her about how we can support that enthusiasm and how we can add to this Labor government’s already very strong record on public transport and active transport in Preston and Reservoir.