Two new bus shelters will be built in Estella after Wagga Council secured a grant from Transport for NSW this week. Photo: Busabout.
It’s all happening in Wagga’s booming northern suburb Estella. A new bakery and pub are on their way, and now it’s set to get bus shelters.
Wagga Wagga City Council has secured funding from Transport for NSW that will see two new bus shelters and routes for Estella.
Under the Country Passenger Transport Infrastructure Grants Scheme (CPTIGS) the two shelters will be constructed at 2 Rainbow Drive (Estella Shopping Centre) and Estella Road (Estella Public School), with an estimated completion date of 30 June.
“We’ve been successful in securing some NSW Transport grant funding to install two new bus stops out at Estella, which is pretty exciting,” council’s director of infrastructure services, Henry Pavitt, said.
“We’ve taken a bit of feedback in from the community in regards to requests for where they would like to see the stops. Obviously the school and the supermarket are becoming quite popular and important locations for the people who travel and live out there; that, along with the traffic that’s going through those spaces in regards to bus travel, made it quite easy to determine where to put the two new shelters.”
According to data from the council, the population of Estella has more than doubled since 2016, and exceeds 5000.
The development of the two new shelters comes just in time for travellers to use Busabout’s (a local bus company) new ticketless cash-free options, which should be in effect by the time the new stops are completed.
Busabout’s new ticketless option was announced by the State Government in late March and a trial is expected by June this year.
“The announcement of cash-free payments is great timing. It’s really lucky for us; it’s a great initiative for us to get to go down that path. It’s great for the residents who use the buses and will hopefully see more people take advantage of public transport,” Member for Wagga Wagga Dr Joe McGirr said in March.
“Contactless systems on buses has been something constituents have been coming to me about for the last few years.
“If people go to Sydney, they see the system in Sydney and they see how easy it is. We’re still using cash in Wagga. It begs the question, why are the regions behind?
“I asked the (Transport) Minister (Jenny Aitchison) a question about this in the House last year, and the minister indicated that there have been trials and they had gone well.
“We’re now able to say we are going to roll out the system to regional NSW, with Wagga being right at the front of that queue.”
