For many Canberrans, driving through the city centre lately feels like navigating an obstacle course. Between the renewal of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, the construction of the new Lyric Theatre and London Central development, as well as the “January Blitz” that saw tracks laid at the intersection of Northbourne Avenue and Alinga Street as part of Light Rail Stage 2A, the heart of our capital is currently a jigsaw of orange bollards, detour signs and temporary speed limits.
The immediate and entirely understandable reaction is often one of frustration. We see traffic backed up along Commonwealth Avenue and we naturally yearn for the days of free-flowing tarmac. But as we sit in that slightly-longer-than-usual queue, we should be asking a radical question: is the disappearance of through-traffic in Civic really a disaster?
For decades, we have treated our Central Business District as a convenient shortcut. Thousands of cars each day use our most valuable real estate as nothing more than a bypass to get from Belconnen to Barton or Gungahlin to Parkes. Recent modelling suggests these types of trips account for half of all peak hour car journeys that enter the city centre. This drive-through culture has prioritised the movement of metal through the centre of town over the safety and comfort of people who work, shop and eat there.
Now, construction has forced our hand. With the northbound span of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge closed and London Circuit partially severed, this shortcut is broken. Modelling from earlier this year shows that while delays are present, they are often shorter than predicted, as drivers adapt by choosing different routes or different modes of transport. We are currently living through a city-wide experiment in traffic evaporation. It’s important that we take this unique opportunity and learn from it.
If we look at the most successful city centres globally, they share a common trait: they are destinations, not thoroughfares. When you remove the pressure of thousands of vehicles trying to get past a city, you unlock the potential of the place itself.
The Griffins understood this when they prepared their original plans for Canberra. Their “Civic Centre” might have been a convergence point for six main avenues, but it proposed a density of development, a frequency of intersections and an abundance of tram lines that would have deterred all but the most dedicated of rat-runners.
We should turn our minds to a future Civic where the primary purpose of the road network isn’t to facilitate a shortcut to somewhere else, but to provide people with access to local businesses and services. We should be encouraging this “destination traffic” – the people who are actually stopping to spend money, visit an office, or meet a friend – while discouraging the kind of through-traffic that has no intention of stopping to meaningfully engage with the city centre.
The opportunities this would create are immense. Currently, much of our city’s public realm is dominated by wide, noisy arterial roads designed to enable cross-town trips. By redirecting this through-traffic, we could widen footpaths, plant more trees to combat the urban heat island effect, and allow the vibrancy and street life of Braddon to spill over into the rest of the CBD.
There is a persistent myth that more cars equals more business. The reality is that people in cars don’t spend money in the places they drive through – a person motoring down Northbourne Avenue on their way to Barton has no interest in looking at shop windows or stopping for a spontaneous coffee. Conversely, research from the ACT Government’s own Better City Streets project highlights that making places better for walking can boost footfall and retail trading in a given area by up to 40%. When we reduce the volume and speed of traffic, we create an environment where people feel safe and welcome to linger. A city that is easy to drive through is almost always a city that is unpleasant to be in.
Here at PTCBR, we see the potential for a Civic that isn’t bisected by a six lane motorway full of cars driving elsewhere. We have the chance to redirect through-traffic to the edges of the city, leaving the internal streets of Civic, such as Vernon Circle, London Circuit and the southern end of Northbourne, to be dominated by people out of cars, rather than in them.
We shouldn’t be aiming to “get back to normal” once the bollards are all packed away in 2028. If we simply reopen every lane and invite the through-traffic back in, we will have wasted a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on the promise of the City and Gateway Framework, the City Plan, and the dozens of well-intentioned strategies that preceded them, by fixing the city’s heart and redesigning Civic’s streets to prioritise “place” over “movement”.
As Canberra moves away from being a loose collection of suburbs connected by freeways, we have a chance to grow into a sophisticated, transit-oriented city. The “chaos” in Civic right now could, if managed properly, be the sound of a city centre uncomfortably shedding the first layer of its old, car-dependent skin.
So, next time you’re diverted around a closed street in the city, don’t just look at the delay. Look at the empty space that used to be full of cars, and imagine what could be built there instead.
A city is people, not just a place to pass through.
A modified version of this article was published in Region here.