The opposition and the Greens have lined up to take partial credit for Labor's commitment to buy more buses and increase service frequency, with all three parties agreeing more buses are needed but disagreeing on detail.
Labor has promised to buy an extra 110 electric buses and increase local route frequency to every 20 minutes by 2028 if the party is re-elected in October.
Transport Minister Chris Steel and Chief Minister Andrew Barr made the announcement at the under-construction Woden bus depot, which is being built to accommodate electric bus charging infrastructure.
"We were criticised by the Canberra Liberals in 2019 when we started this transition to electric buses," Mr Steel said.
"They criticised us for investing in electric buses and they've admitted now that their transport plan, including their alternative bus way for light rail, simply won't work. We're committed to this transition. We're getting on with it."
Mark Parton, the opposition transport spokesman, said Canberrans needed to ask why it took the release of the Liberals' bus policy in April to prompt Labor's commitment.
The Liberals have vowed to scrap the light rail to Woden project and instead invest in an electric bus fleet to deliver a network that offered local buses every 30 minutes during the day, seven days a week, and rapid services at least every 15 minutes between 7am and 7pm.
Labor's policy would increase Sunday services to hourly or better, to match Saturday frequencies, from next year.
Jo Clay, the Greens' spokeswoman on transport, said Labor's policy was more proof that the Greens were "changemakers" in the ACT.
"Without our similar announcement four months ago, there's no way Labor would have come out at this election promising to make suburban buses more frequent," Ms Clay said.
"With Labor in charge of buses, people in the community have been forced to plan their whole day around a service that is just too infrequent."
Ms Clay said the Greens' policy went further by offering free travel to children, low-income earners, concession card holders and pensioners, and provided weekend buses every half an hour which was "twice as ambitious as the Labor policy".
Labor's commitment also set off political sniping over the number of buses each party was committed to buying.
Labor said it would buy an extra 110 electric buses, 10 more than the Greens' commitment. But the Greens said it would grow the fleet to 550 buses in total, and said Labor's plan offered no detail on the future fleet size.
Mr Parton said the Liberal policy "quite clearly said" an extra 500 buses would be needed over the next parliamentary term.
"Mr Steel's claim that 110 is a greater addition than any other party is quite simply wrong," Mr Parton said.
Public Transport Association of Canberra chair Ryan Hemsley said it was good to see all three major parties in the ACT commit to improve bus service frequency and called on Labor to match the Liberal and Greens commitments on weekend services.
"We know passengers want more frequent weekend buses. As soon as Saturday bus services increased to hourly running earlier this year, patronage increased by more than 20 per cent," Mr Hemsley said.
"Canberra is a modern city with people living full lives every day of the week - we need to move away from old-fashioned attitudes towards weekend public transport service."
Mr Steel on Friday said Labor's commitments on weekend services reflected "the current situation that we have with the workforce and the enterprise agreement" and the party wanted only to promise things that were achievable.
