Commonwealth Park is one of Canberra’s best-located and most beautiful parks – but there’s no denying that it is difficult to get to, hard to move around in, and marred by excessive amounts of surface carparking. PTCBR was therefore excited to see the National Capital Authority recently release Commonwealth Park Concept Vision 2025 – a future-focused planning document with a bold vision to fix many of the park’s issues and create a more welcoming place.
We produced a submission to the NCA’s public consultation round for the concept document – you can read and download our submission below.
PTCBR is broadly supportive of this concept – and we think it’s especially great to see the NCA engaging positively with the ACT Government’s light rail project. However, we can see significant room for improvement in how this plan treats public and active transport. One key example is access: we want to see public transport access to Commonwealth Park drastically improved, for both light rail and buses, and we don’t think this proposal properly considers the need for convenient access lines into the park or management of crowd flow.
PTCBR looks forward to seeing this planning work progress, and we hope our observations and recommendations will have a positive impact on that work.