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They've been immortalised in ink, in coffee cups and in cake but transport minister Meegan Fitzharris says Canberra's new light rail stops could be as iconic as the city's famous bus shelters. The minister unveiled the latest "little milestone" in stage one of the city's light rail project - the names of the 13 light rail stops stretching from Gungahlin Place to Alinga Street in Civic. The new light rail stops will be: Gungahlin Place, Manning Clark North, Mapleton Avenue, Nullarbor Avenue, Well Station Drive, EPIC and Racecourse, Phillip Avenue, Swinden Street, Dickson Interchange, Macarthur Avenue, Ipima Street, Eloura Street and Alinga Street. And the next milestone in the project will be the design of the stops, which the minister hopes will be as distinctive as the 'bunker' bus shelters. "[The design] will come out in the next couple of months so we'll have some designs for people to look at," Ms Fitzharris said. "Obviously we've been working with Canberra Metro on those designs as well as NCA because the design of the stops, particularly on the spots they're responsible for, are very important to them as well so we'll have the final designs out for people to look at over the next couple of months as well." Ms Fitzharris said the design will be "broadly similar" to the ones in the original artist's impressions but will be "much more developed". "They've had a lot of input from local designers as well so they represent parts of the city people will be familiar with so they'll be pretty exciting for people to have a look at," Ms Fitzharris said. Ms Fitzharris said stage one of light rail is on schedule, with work underway at every point along the rout. The first piece of track to be laid in May or June and the first vehicle shells have gone into production in Spain. Work is also underway to integrate stage one and two of the project "seamlessly". At the Alinga Street stop will be a recharging facility for the trams, as stage two of the light rail has to be wire-free, Ms Fitzharris confirmed. "Because we'd always planned for this to be a city-wide project we knew that anything beyond Alinga Street would require us to be wire free and that includes a Russell extension or across the lake so the capacity is within each of the vehicles to be wire free anyway and within the tracks itself," she said. "My understanding [of the charging station] that it'd be no extra time, it sort of recharges as it goes, as in no extra time from the time it takes to stop and unload and load on passengers anyway so there's no additional time." Work is also continuing on updating the bus network to make way for light rail. Ms Fitzharris said there would be two bus network refreshes between now and this time next year. "We don't want to be at the point where we are refreshing the whole network at the same time as we're starting up light rail so there'll probably be two points of network updates between now and the start of light rail so one this year with the introduction of new rapid services and one in the first quarter of 2018, although that date may be subject to change," Ms Fitzharris said.

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