It’s time to bury the “Barton Dogleg”

The following is an opinion piece by PTCBR Deputy Chair Ryan Hemsley. If you are interested in writing for the PTCBR website on ACT public transport topics, please get in touch.

Within the next six months, the ACT Government will decide on the final alignment for Light Rail Stage 2B through Canberra’s Parliamentary Zone.

This is not a minor decision. The final choice of alignment will determine how useful and credible Canberra’s light rail network will be as a serious form of transport for decades to come.

The options are simple: a direct alignment via State Circle East, or an indirect route via Parkes and Barton (the “Barton Dogleg”). The ACT Government unceremoniously dumped the latter option in 2018 in favour of the Commonwealth-approved State Circle East, only for it to resurface in a slightly modified form in the 2024 plans.

As I’ll be explaining in this article, State Circle East is the quicker, more cost-effective option that delivers wider benefits to the whole transport network. By comparison, the Barton Dogleg risks leaving light rail permanently less attractive than the existing buses, jeopardising the project’s viability and weakening public support for future stages of the network.

This is why I believe the ACT Government has no choice but to proceed with the State Circle East alignment to deliver Light Rail to Woden.

Reason 1: State Circle East is faster

The below graphic illustrates the core issue with the Barton Dogleg – it takes significantly longer to travel between Canberra’s City Centre and Woden (33-35 minutes) than State Circle East (25-30 minutes) or the existing R4 and R5 bus routes which run direct between these two destinations.

Much is made of the anticipated journey times for light rail compared with the existing rapid buses. The counter argument, as outlined in the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Light Rail Stage 2B and illustrated above, is that forecast traffic congestion will cause bus journey times to balloon out significantly over the next decade and beyond.

For a variety of reasons, there will never be permanent, full length, dedicated lanes for buses operating on Commonwealth Avenue. A bus running between the City and Woden in 2031 and 2041 will possess no travel time advantage over light rail (operating on its own right of way, with traffic signal priority) running along the State Circle East alignment during those busy peak periods.

The same cannot be said of the Barton Dogleg. With a minimum travel time of 33 minutes between the City and Woden (and no plans to run “express” light rail services on either alignment) a rapid bus will always be faster than the equivalent trip on light rail along the Barton Dogleg, even under the draft EIS’s worst-case scenario for traffic congestion.

The forecast journey times for the Barton Dogleg have also steadily deteriorated as planning work on the project has progressed. As outlined in Table 1, a journey between the City and Woden via Parkes and Barton is now expected to take between 5 and 8 minutes longer than the initial estimates in 2018.

The ACT Government’s supplementary submission to the 2018 Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Light Rail Stage 2 approvals identified journey time as a key driver of patronage. It claimed that a diversion via Kings Avenue – then forecast to take between 35 and 39 minutes between the City and Woden – would result in a 20 per cent drop in patronage compared to the more direct route via Commonwealth Avenue.

This claim is backed up by data from the consultation report included in the draft EIS, with 45 per cent of respondents raising concerns about increased travel times. These findings are consistent with previous research on the issue, where journey times were identified by 72 per cent of respondents as a key reason for not using public transport in Canberra.

To justify choosing the slower Barton Dogleg over the more direct State Circle East, there would need to be strong evidence showing that any loss in patronage due to extended travel times would be more than overcome by increased usage of stops located closer to key destinations in Parkes and Barton.

That evidence doesn’t exist.

Reason 2: State Circle East delivers more city-wide benefits

As shown in Table 2, the 2019 preliminary draft business case for Light Rail to Woden shows no difference in the long-term patronage estimates for the original (28-33 minute) version of the Barton Dogleg or the State Circle East alignment, even accounting for substantial population and employment increases in Parkes and Barton between now and 2046.

This is a helpful illustration of the trade-offs between journey time and stop placement. For every new passenger who would catch light rail on the Barton Dogleg alignment because it provides a stop closer to their origin and/or destination, one less passenger would use it due to the extended time it would take to complete their trip.

While it isn’t explicitly stated, these patronage estimates clearly assume there will be no competing bus routes offering a direct service between the City and Woden when light rail commences operations. This is an entirely reasonable assumption when the journey times on light rail are roughly equal to or better than the rapid bus, as was the case for Light Rail Stage 1.

This outcome is possible if the government proceeds with State Circle East. When it commences operations in 2033, light rail operating on this alignment will provide a peak period journey time comparable to the rapid bus. However, this is not the case for the Barton Dogleg, which will always be slower regardless of the time of day.

This has serious implications for bus network integration. No government would risk the backlash of cancelling two popular bus services and requiring all those people to catch a substantially slower light rail service. The more likely scenario, taking these political considerations into account, is that the Barton Dogleg would run in parallel with the existing rapid buses between the City and Woden, as illustrated in the concepts below.

As public transport expert Jarrett Walker explains, this scenario would lead to an inefficient network that competes with itself.

In addition to the inevitable loss of patronage for light rail, the city-wide consequences of running parallel buses would be substantial.

Replacing the “Red Rapid” bus service with Light Rail Stage 1 saw over 1 million bus service kilometres per year redistributed across Canberra’s public transport network, enabling the delivery of 8 new rapid bus routes and more frequent local buses to underserviced areas. Consequently, you didn’t have to live next to the light rail to benefit from it.

These city-wide bus improvements cannot be replicated if Light Rail Stage 2B simply duplicates the existing City to Woden rapid bus services. The benefits of the project would instead be limited to the corridor and substantially more difficult to sell to residents of fast-growing districts such as Belconnen and the Molonglo Valley, or under-serviced areas such as Tuggeranong, who would be left without immediate, tangible improvements to their bus services as a result of this project.

In response to the self-centred but entirely predictable question of “what’s in it for me?”, the answer for the vast majority of Canberrans under a Barton Dogleg scenario would be “nothing”. It’s difficult to see how public support for the project, or indeed future stages of light rail, could be sustained under these circumstances.

This leaves the Barton Dogleg in an awkward position. Compared to State Circle East, it delivers a slower journey, possesses no patronage advantage and would deny residents of other parts of Canberra the chance of improved public transport services.

With all these comparative disadvantages, you would hope it was cheaper.

It isn’t.

Reason 3: State Circle East costs less

The 2019 draft business case also provides preliminary capital and operational costs for Light Rail to Woden. These figures shouldn’t be taken as gospel – they are now six years old and predate many of the market constraints that have increased the cost of delivering new infrastructure. They do however give us an indication of the relative costs of the two alignments.

These figures, reproduced in Table 3, indicate that the Barton Dogleg would cost more to build and run than a light rail alignment via State Circle East.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise – at 10.5km, the Barton Dogleg is a full kilometre longer than the 9.5km State Circle East. Construction would also take place in a far more constrained, built-up environment along the streets of Parkes and Barton, as opposed to the more spacious State Circle. This will increase the number of utilities impacted, which is a well-known contributor to the costs, both seen and unforeseen, of Australian light rail projects.

It is also consistent with the findings of the Parliamentary Inquiry, which concluded that proceeding with the Barton Dogleg would “unavoidably add further complexity, time, and cost” to the project.

These figures should of course be considered in context. If one option provides greater benefits per dollar spent, it may be worth choosing over a cheaper alternative.

As outlined previously, this isn’t the case for the Barton Dogleg. No matter how you slice it, the case for the slower, costlier alternative to State Circle East simply doesn’t stack up.

The way forward

Light Rail to Woden should be the backbone of Canberra’s future public transport system. This can only happen if it provides a reasonable journey time between the City and Woden, delivers Canberra-wide benefits and builds public confidence in future extensions.

The Barton Dogleg does the opposite. It locks in permanently longer travel times, higher costs and fewer benefits for those who live and work outside the corridor. Exactly how it has survived to this point, despite falling short on every metric that matters, defies rational explanation.

The ACT Government has one realistic option – to proceed with State Circle East. By choosing this option, it can deliver real public transport benefits at a metropolitan scale, lay a solid foundation for future stages of light rail and finally shed the aura of planning uncertainty that has dogged this project for nearly a decade.

To ensure the long-term success of Canberra’s light rail network, it’s time to bury the Barton Dogleg.

UPDATE: On 4 May 2026, the ACT Government confirmed that Light Rail Stage 2B will use the State Circle East alignment. You can read this announcement here.