The ACT Transport Minister will face fresh pressure to ease a significant bottleneck in Belconnen that holds up buses in peak times, with flow-on effects across the network.
A petition to the Legislative Assembly and a separate Greens motion will put a possible bus priority lane between Belconnen and the city back on the government's agenda.
But Transport Minister Chris Steel said the situation may have changed since studies considered a bus priority lane in the area.
"Belconnen to the city is one of the busiest public transport corridors in Canberra. Whilst the government implemented bus priority measures in key locations from Belconnen to city in the past, the studies on further options to improve bus priority in the corridor are now a decade old," Mr Steel said.
"Previous assumptions may have changed because of the ongoing growth of Belconnen and it is reasonable to reconsider other bus priority options on the basis of updated traffic modelling and consideration of future development of housing, health and tertiary education precincts in the region."
Jo Clay, the Greens' spokeswoman on transport, said improving bus priority between Belconnen and the city, particularly along Haydon Drive, was a high priority project that would improve bus running times across the network.
"If you build the Belco busway properly, you build it with light rail in mind and you're actually going to be enabling that stage 3 planning for light rail," Ms Clay said.
"And that means we might see light rail a wee bit quicker out to Belconnen than the current plans, which look like about the late 2030s."
Ms Clay's motion, set to be debated in the Assembly next week, would commit the government to delivering upgrades on the corridor within three years and to start early planning work for a third light rail stage to Belconnen.
Mr Steel did not say whether Labor would support the motion, which notes Belconnen's population growth and the Belconnen-to-city bus corridor handling Canberra's two busiest bus routes.
The R2 and R4 - along with the fifth busiest route, the R3 - handled more than 30 per cent of bus boardings in the third quarter of 2022, data released by the Greens showed.
Meanwhile, a separate petition to the Assembly sponsored by Labor's Tara Cheyne has called for improved bus priority measures on Haydon Drive and Belconnen Way. The petition is calling for investigations into improved access to bus stops for key sites along the route, including childcare centres, the Belconnen Community Centre and the North Canberra Hospital.
Heidi Prowse, who launched the petition, said the government needed to prioritise better connections for Belconnen residents as light rail was still decades away, but expert analysis would determine the best way to achieve the improved travel times.
"I'm a resident that has a social need. I'm not a facilitator of significant infrastructure. I don't necessarily know what would be best - the expertise will come in to determine that - what I do know is that the routes are delayed, sometimes they have to skip stops to make up time," Mrs Prowse said.
The petition had attracted 37 signatures by Thursday afternoon.
Belconnen Community Council chair Lachlan Butler said it was positive both the Greens and Labor were talking about the need to improve bus connections between Belconnen and the city.
"If that bus comes eight minutes late and it's full, it's a pretty unpleasant experience," Mr Butler said.
"Belconnen town centre's supposed to have all this fantastic public transport connectivity ... [It can be] a bad experience. If you have that sort of experience, you're pretty quickly going to turn to a car, then you've got more peak hour traffic.
"We want to see public transport work for as many people as possible because we think people should have choice in how they get around the city."
Mr Butler said short- to medium-term improvements were needed and would support the eventual construction of light rail along the route.
"A little bit more planning has to happen here, but not a lot has changed except for more people on the roads, more people on buses, more people living in Belconnen; not a lot has changed on Haydon Drive," he said.
Public Transport Association of Canberra chair Ryan Hemsley said the renewed focus on the project boded well for its completion, which would be feasible within three years. The association had been pushing for its completion since 2021, he said.
"The first two stages ... were delivered over a three year period from 2012 to 2015 and in many respects those were more significant projects that required a great deal more construction intensity to deliver," Mr Hemsley said.
But the project would need to start before significant development along the corridor, including a new $1 billion hospital, made it harder to incorporate public transport, he said.
"It has to be done now. If you don't consider public transport early in your planning, you lose your opportunity to provide quality connections," Mr Hemsley said.
Two stages of a Belconnen bus transitway project, including improvements at the city end and the Belconnen end, were completed but a suggested bus lane along Haydon Drive was never built.
