Heat on Government to get public servants to use state’s buses

SALARY sacrifice sweeteners should be used to get state public servants to catch the bus to work to help ease traffic congestion, unions and welfare groups say.

The State Government is being lobbied to offer incentives to encourage more public servants to use public transport to get to and from work. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

SALARY sacrifice sweeteners should be used to get many of the state’s 37,000 public servants to catch the bus to work to help ease growing traffic congestion, unions and welfare groups say.

The State Government is under pressure to provide solutions to Hobart’s traffic gridlock and is being lobbied by the Tasmanian Council of Social Service and the Community and Public Sector Union to offer incentives to reduce public servant reliance on vehicle transport to and from work.

“The Tasmanian Government should use its position as the state’s largest employer to help bolster transport operators’ viability by creating and expanding incentives for public servants to use passenger transport, for instance through salary packaging arrangements,’’ TasCOSS noted in its recent response to the State Government’s Transport Access Strategy.

“If public and commercial transport operators are not only to remain financially viable but to expand and improve their services for transport-disadvantaged Tasmanians, they need steady ridership, including full-fare passengers.’’

TasCOSS CEO Kym Goodes said the incentive-based proposal was about trying to challenge peoples’ thinking in terms of public transport.

“We shouldn’t be scared to look at different ways of doing things,’’ Ms Goodes said.

She said the Government could take the lead “to change the culture of how we move around’’.

Traffic woes, especially in Hobart, could be reduced and transport providers made more viable if only a minority of the state’s public servants swapped their vehicle for bus transport, Ms Goodes said.

CPSU state secretary Tom Lynch said the salary sacrifice plan to get more public servants on passenger transport was a good idea that would not cost taxpayers anything extra.

Employers can provide employees with $500 worth of services deemed tax-free, he said.

“Certainly Metro, if people were regularly using Metro and they had a fixed cost, they could have a certain amount salary sacrificed each fortnight,’’ Mr Lynch said.

He said the plan would be attractive to a lot of the state’s 23,500 full-time equivalent public servants, particularly in and around Hobart and Launceston.

He said the extra demand could be matched with the provision of express bus services and CBD pick-up points.

“Make it a Rolls Royce service and people will use it,’’ he said.

Mr Lynch said the idea was pursued behind the scenes during the term of the previous government when now Greens Senator Nick McKim was a state minister, but said it was “stymied by politics’’.

TasCOSS also says the Government needs to urgently boost its spending on public transport.

The Government’s per capita level of spending on public transport remains the lowest in the country, totaling $209.86 per person per year, even less than the Northern Territory, at $231.75 per person annually.

Originally published as Heat on Government to get public servants to use state’s buses