The transport and accessibility topic area was the mostpopular during Round 2 of consultation and almost 33 percent of forum participants were involved in discussions. Strongsupport was recorded for initiatives to reduce or improve carusage, and increase the service levels of public transport.Initiatives to encourage walking and cycling to work also drewgeneral support from participants. The participants in supportof more roads and freeways were in the minority.

—Metropolitan Strategy Information Bulletin,

November 2001

The PTUA acknowledges the contributions of Shaun Ashdowne, Daniel Borowski, Daniel Bowen, Les Chandra, Paul Mees,Glen Mills, Anna Morton, Lucy Oates, Peter Parker, David Robertson and Vaughan Williams in the production of this document.Overall production was coordinated by Tony Morton.Artwork from Shaun Ashdowne, David Engwicht, Tony Fuery, Matt Golding, Bronwyn Halls Michael Leunig, Anthony Morton, Lucy Oates,Miriam Powell and Andy Singer used with permission.Design and layout by BAT DesignPrinting by ACE Printing

Copyright © 2002 Public Transport Users Association Inc.Permission is granted to reproduce portions of this document on a non-commercial basis subject to proper acknowledgement.Map images from Melway Street Directory Edition No. 29 © Melway Publishing Pty. Ltd. Used with permission.

National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication entry:

It's time to move.

ISBN 0 646 41893 9.

1. Urban transportation - Victoria - Melbourne - Planning. 2. Local transit - Victoria - Melbourne. I. Public Transport Users Association (Vic.).

388.4099451

Production of this document was made possible by a bequest from the late Patrick O’Connor, foundation member of the PTUA.

All around Melbourne, people areconcerned about the quality of publictransport. Public authorities, from localcouncils to Federal government agencies,pay lip service to the idea of reducingcar dependence and encouragingalternatives such as public transport,walking and cycling. Yet the majority ofMelburnians do virtually all of their travelby car and show no signs of changing.Why should we bother making the effort?

Triple Bottom LinesThe explosion in private car travel is oneof many unsustainable twentieth-centuryhabits that are detrimental to life in cities,as well as the natural environment. Mostof these effects cannot be assessedunder the usual financial cost-benefitcriteria. What dollar value do we place ona reduction in childhood asthma due toair pollution? Or on a reduction in cartraffic making it easier to cross the road?

To allow benefits and drawbacks to beconsidered on their own terms,policymakers developed the idea of thetriple bottom line. The idea is that policyinitiatives are separately assessed oneconomic, environmental and socialcriteria. A project that looks goodeconomically but fails environmentally willjust i f iably lose to an al ternat ivethat succeeds on all three criteria.(Unfortunately the political realities areoften very different, as we shall see.)

Triple-bottom-line planning is popularwith local governments in Victoria, and ispromoted by the current StateGovernment. So let us imagine what atriple bottom line analysis of publictransport against private cars onfreeways might look like.

ECONOMY

Public Transport:the Efficient People MoverEconomics deals with the efficientallocation of scarce resources. It’s aboutgetting the most ‘bang for our buck’ inprocuring goods and services. So we areconcerned with the efficient movement ofpeople, and with freight—since freighttravels on the same roads and railwaysthat carry passengers.

Both public transport and roads consumescarce resources: money, land, and fuelto operate vehicles. In its resource usepublic transport has what economistscall—returns to scale: the more users, thegreater the economic benefit. This isbecause a public transport service costsabout the same amount to provide,regardless of how many passengers itcarries. Full trains don’t draw much morepower than empty trains; buses and busdrivers cost money whether they’re onthe road or sitting idle at depots.

Road traffic, on the other hand, displaysdiminishing returns to scale. This isbecause roads quickly fill up with traffic,and once congestion sets in, eachadditional vehicle slows everyone down.(Of course, this can also happen withpublic transport if there are enough users,as on the London Underground in peakhour, but in Melbourne we are a long,long way from having this problem.)

This is the fundamental reason whyincreasing the viability of public transportalways involves getting more passengers

onto the system, while efforts to increasethe viability of roads are all aboutreducing the density of traffic by buildingextra capacity. In practice things arenever so simple. Building extra roadcapacity encourages people to drivefurther and more often, so that beforelong traffic congestion is just as bad as itwas before. And efforts to increasepublic transport patronage are bound tofail as long as private car transport offersa superior alternative.

Currently Melbourne’s public transportand road systems are both heavilysubsidised because we are stuck in twovicious cycles. On the one hand, car usespirals out of control:

more traffic > more investment inbigger roads > more road space >more traffic again

Meanwhile, public transport hashistorically been on a downward spiral:

fewer passengers > less revenue > lowerinvestment > lower standard of service,leading to > even fewer passengers

This remains the trend despite somemarginal service improvements made bythe Kennett Government as a ‘sweetener’for privatisation. These improvementshave boosted the absolute numbersusing public transport from its all-time lowin the early 1980s, but the number ofpublic transport trips as a share of all tripsis now lower than it has ever been inMelbourne, at a mere 7 per cent.1 EvenBrisbane now has a greater share of tripsby public transport!

Part I:The Importance of Public Transport

destination. The implications are severefor road trauma and transport-relatedenergy use—not to mention the ongoingcost of maintaining the Hume Highway.But all these truck journeys could bereplaced by just 10 additional freighttrains a day on the parallel railway line.3

Rail also has advantages for some localfreight transport. While rail cannot link allpossible origins and destinations, thePorts of Melbourne and Geelong, and keyindustrial zones in Dandenong,Broadmeadows, Altona and Geelong, areall rail-connected. The Ford MotorCompany used to move goods by railbetween its factories in Broadmeadowsand Geelong, but now uses B-triple roadtrains for this purpose.

Public transport means moreopen spaceAn oft-neglected economic aspect oftransport policy is the alienation of landfor transport infrastructure. Massmotoring requires an enormousinvestment in land: not just for roads butalso for car parking, petrol stations andother car-related land uses. In Melbournearound 40% of urban land is taken up byroads, driveways and car parks; inparticular suburbs the proportion can beas high as 70%.

Of course, railways and tramways alsorequire land. But the impact onsurrounding neighbourhoods of a tram ortrain line is on the whole less obtrusivecompared with a road of similar capacity.Not only does it require less land; thenoise and pollution are also reduced.

FreightThe exact same principles that apply topassenger transport also apply to freight.The benefits of shifting freight from roadto rail are most obvious for inter-cityfreight. Currently some 3,200 heavytrucks move up and down the HumeHighway between Melbourne andSydney every day, winding up onsuburban streets on the way to their final

Better public transport means lesscongested roadsThe win-win solution involves shifting cartrips to public transport, walking andcycling. By increasing public transportpatronage the cost recovery andeconomic viability of public transportimprove. At the same time, if peoplesubstitute public transport trips for cartrips, the roads become less congestedso that other car trips can proceed athigher speed. This makes road transportmore efficient too. Road space can alsobe turned over to wallking and cycling, toencourage these other importanttransport modes.

Because road congestion is highlysensitive to the number of vehiclespresent, it doesn’t take much of a ‘modeshift’ to have tangible effects. Consultantsfor the Scoresby Freeway EnvironmentalEffects Statement in 1997 found that ifjust 2 per cent of existing car trips couldbe shifted to public transport, the benefitsfor the remaining 98% of car trips wouldbe greater than from building the freeway!

Public transport means lessroad traumaWhen a mode of transport injures largenumbers of people, this must countagainst its economic efficiency. InVictoria, road-related incidents kill some400 people and put another 3000 inhospital every year.2 The cost toVictorians of treating these injuries is astaggering $1.8 billion a year—abouttriple the net cost of providing all ofVictoria’s public transport services.

Human beings are prone to makingmistakes, but it’s only on the road that ourmistakes so often have such tragicconsequences. Sadly, road deaths andinjuries are likely to be with us as long asthere are large numbers of people incharge of vehicles moving at high speedacross each other’s path. Rigorousenforcement of alcohol, speed and give-wayrules can do a lot to reduce the road toll, butas we have seen lately in Victoria, the deathtoll cannot be kept down forever while moreand more people are encouraged to drivefurther and more often.

A peaceful setting in Burnley, directly adjacent to Melbourne’s busiest train line.

The Mitchell Freeway in Perth, with theNorthern Suburbs Rail Line.

Two railway tracks = 25 metres (total width of easement)6 freeway lanes = 100 metres (width of easement)

Railway capacity = 40,000 people per hourFreeway capacity = 10,800 cars per hour

Cars per day on freeway = 106,000 (at Hutton St)Average car occupancy = 1.2 passengers

Potential passengers per hour on freeway = 12,960

Conclusion: A 25 metre-wide reservation carries3,240 passengers by road or 40,000 by rail in an hour.

Sources: WA Railways, WA Main Roads, ARA

Road planners talk up the economicbenefits partly because it’s politicallyconvenient. All Australian governmentsnow regard themselves primarily aseconomic managers, and believe that themost appropriate way to stimulateeconomic growth is by providing publicinfrastructure that supports industry. Sothe road lobby merely has to argue thatnew freeways will stimulate economicgrowth, and the government will have amandate to build freeways.

Leaving aside the question of whether‘economic growth’ fuelled by greaterpetrol consumption and alienation of landis a good or a bad thing, there is simplyno evidence that road-building producesany economic benefit at all.

The very idea that roads are an economicstimulus arose with the Thatcher

government in Britain, which commencedone of the world’s most ambitious freewayprogrammes in the 1980s. Theprogramme was dramatically scaled backin the 1990s due to public opposition, butin 1997 the whole idea was discredited bythe government’s Standing AdvisoryCommittee on Trunk Road Assessment(SACTRA). The SACTRA report found thatroad-building had no discernable effect instimulating economic growth, and mayeven have a negative economic impact.5

Even in Melbourne there is plenty ofevidence against the idea that freewaysare good for the economy. The westernsuburbs have a higher concentration offreeways than the eastern suburbs, yetthe eastern suburbs have always beenbetter off economically. The Western RingRoad commenced construction in 1992with the promise that it would generatean economic boom for the westernsuburbs. By 1996 the first section of theRing Road (through Broadmeadows) wasopen for business. Yet according tocensus figures, Broadmeadowscontinued to have one of the highestunemployment rates in Australia.Meanwhile Knox, with no freeways at all,had one of the highest employmentgrowth rates in Melbourne.6

Despite all the evidence piling up againstthe economic benefits of freeways, theroad lobby seem unwilling to abandontheir argument, and instead produceflawed studies to defend it. The studiesdraw their erroneous conclusions byignoring the ‘feedback’ effect of inducedtraffic (see next page), and by adding upall the two-minute time savings they canfind—which individually are of noeconomic importance besides perhapsallowing office workers to grab a secondcup of coffee before work.

The real difficulty is that governmentsmake public roads available to freightersalmost for free while charging heftyaccess fees for rail. To move 1,000tonnes of freight by rail costs $5,585 instate-imposed access fees, while tomove it by road costs just $458 in truckregistration.4 Indeed, road freighttransport is priced so cheaply in Australiathat companies can save money by turningthe public road network into a substitutewarehouse for their goods: this is called‘Just-In-Time inventory management’(though not all companies use JIT this way).Heavy trucks are the cause of mostdamage to road surfaces, but it is thepublic purse that picks up the bill.

Everyone has an interest in reducing thenumber of large trucks that drive throughresidential areas. Freeways are not reallythe answer because they are no better atlinking all possible origins anddestinations than railways are. The onlysustainable long-term solution is toreform the discriminatory access regimesthat distort the market by favouring roadtransport over rail transport, and movetoward a system of bulk freight depotsconnected by rail, from which smallervehicles move goods to their finaldestinations. Many large companiesalready approximate this kind of system intheir own freight operations.

But aren’t freeways meant to begood for the economy?Attracting more passengers to publictransport and reducing road congestion isa win-win economically. New roads havethe opposite effect, by starving publictransport of patronage and increasingcongestion. But if this is so, why has everynew freeway in Melbourne been touted asa boon for the Victorian economy?

[A]n OECD report… summarising the available evidence,concluded that:• Building more roads has not noticeably reducedcongestion—new road space is quickly filled. Even citieswith the best road networks have high congestion levels...Where little or no attempt is made to increase road capacityin line with demand, cities do not grind to a halt. People andfirms adapt and make other choices on mode or destination.The OECD… has also concluded that… improving trafficflow eventually leads to more emissions overall as a resultof the additional vehicle kilometres… generated.

—Melbourne Metro. Strategy, Technical Report No.1, 2001

For those uncomfortable with theoretical arguments, the effectcan be verified with actual data.9 Waverley Road in East Malvern

carried large volumes of traffic coming off the Mulgrave Freewayin Chadstone before the South Eastern Arterial opened in 1988(and was upgraded to full freeway status in 1996). Althoughthere was an initial easing of congestion on Waverley Roadwhen the freeway link opened, within five years traffic had builtup to almost the same level as before. A similar effect wasobserved on High Street Road nearby. Note that before 1988the traffic level on Waverley Road was barely increasing, whilethat on High Street Road was actually decreasing. Bothincreased sharply over the following years.

Ultimately, all of the supposed benefits of new freewayscome back to this key assumption, that the freeway willrelieve traffic congestion. For example, freeways are claimedto reduce pollution because uncongested traffic doesn’t stopand start as often. Or, freeways will benefit the economybecause reduced congestion means shorter travelling times.It has been conclusively demonstrated that all thesearguments are fallacious: instead of reducing congestion,freeways encourage vast amounts of new traffic that producemore pollution and take just as long to get anywhere. Youonly have to visit Los Angeles to be convinced!

For every problem there is always a solution that is simple,obvious, and wrong.

—attributed to Mark Twain

Feedback occurs whenever the outputs of a system have aneffect on the inputs. Speak too loudly into a microphone, andthe resulting amplified signal gets picked up and put throughthe system a second time. This produces an even loudersignal, which is picked up a third time. Very quickly the noisebuilds up and the amplifier squeals until you turn the volumedown. This is known as ‘positive feedback’ because thesignal feeds back on itself over and over again.

Freeway building generates its own form of positive feedback.It’s common to suppose that building new roads will relievetraffic congestion, because theincreased road space provides moreroom for the same amount of traffic. Butthis ignores the feedback effect a newroad has on people. A new road is morethan just relief for existing journeys; it isalso an opportunity for people

•to make new journeys that theymay not have contemplated before,

•to make the same journey more often,

•to drive instead of taking publictransport, or

•to travel longer distances toaccomplish the same task.

All these have the effect of increasing theamount of traffic on the new road (andon the existing roads that feed it). If thefeedback effect is significant, the roadsystem can wind up just as congestedas before, but now there are morepeople caught up in the congestion,more energy is being consumed, andmore pollution generated.

Transport planners have verified thatthis effect occurs with all new roads,and call it ‘induced traffic’ or ‘generated traffic’. The firstofficial acknowledgement of the effect was in the 1994 reportof the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk RoadAssessment.7 The expert team from the UK Department ofTransport concluded that

Travellers must, as a matter of logic, be assumed torespond to reductions in travel time brought about by roadimprovements by travelling more or further.

—Standing Advisory C’tee on Trunk Road Assessment, 1994

The conclusions of the SACTRA report are nowacknowledged by transport experts around the world,including Australia’s own Institution of Engineers:

New urban roads always attract traffic…the two main sourcesare induced traffic (trips that would not otherwise have beenmade had the road not been built) and diverted traffic (tripsthat would otherwise have followed some alternative route)

—Institution of Engineers Australia, 1990 8

The new Metropolitan Strategy itself cites a report of theOECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment) that draws similar conclusions about the effectof new roads on traffic levels.

Feedback:Why Freeways Don’t Reduce Traffic Congestion

ENVIRONMENT

Public Transport:Easy on the EarthAt present pollutants from vehicles arethe prime cause of poor air quality thatdamages human health, plants and thefabric of buildings. Noise from vehiclesand aircraft is a major source of stressand dissatisfaction, notably in townsbut now intruding into many tranquilareas. Construction of new roads andairports to accommodate traffic isdestroying irreplaceble landscapesand features of our culturalheritage. The present generation’scavalier and constantly increasinguse of non-renewable resourceslike oil may well foreclose theoptions for future generations. Thisis doubly irresponsible in view of therisks from global warming.—Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 199410

The environmental benefits of publictransport have been documentedextensively and are cited more than anyother reason in favour of increasing publictransport usage as an alternative to the car.

Less polluting, healthier transportAir pollution in Melbourne is estimated tobe responsible for 300 premature deathseach year, from conditions such asasthma and lung cancer. Childhoodas thma has reached ep idem icproportions in our cities, with increasedair pollution cited as a key factor. Whilemuch air pollution arises from industryand from domestic fireplaces, most of itcomes from cars and trucks. Moreimportantly, the share from cars andtrucks is increasing while that from othersources is declining.

Trains and trams on the other hand produceno local air pollution. They cannot rightly becalled zero-pollution vehicles because theywill be responsible for some emissions froma power-station smokestack in the LatrobeValley. But they nonetheless have theadvantage, along with buses, that the

emissions per passenger are much lowerthan for cars. A bus may produce five timesas much pollution as a single car, but if thebus carries 50 people and the car oneperson, the emissions per passenger areonly one-tenth as great by bus. Trams arealso able to regenerate energy when braking,something that is still beyond the capabilitiesof the internal combustion engine.

With public transport we and our childrencan breathe easier. Even the pollutionarising from buses is set to reduce, withmany of the ‘dirty diesels’ in bus fleets setto be replaced with new gas-poweredvehicles. These have much loweremissions of the nastier exhaust gasessuch as nitrogen oxides andhydrocarbons, and virtually none of theparticulate matter that can lodge in thelungs and cause serious illness.

Public transport is easier not just on thelungs but on the ears also. According tocurrent medical opinion, sound sleeprequires ambient noise levels no greaterthan 35 decibels (dBA) and intelligibleconversation requires levels less than45 decibels.11 These levels are routinelyexceeded in the vicinity of busy roads,and as far as 1km from freeways. Aprincipal cause of traffic noise is thefriction of tyres on bitumen, whichproduces a continuous background humpersisting for 24 hours a day. The onlysolution to this kind of noise nuisance isto slow down the traffic, or shift car tripsto quieter modes. This becomes easierwhen alternative forms of transport areavailable. A train certainly has a noiseimpact, but less so than the cumulativeeffect of the hundreds of cars it displaces.

Conserving open spaceAs was explained in the previous section,public transport has a smaller ‘land usefootprint’ per passenger than private cartravel. This means that for a givencapacity, public transport consumes lessopen space than roads. Furthermore, theeffect of public transport on the remainingopen space is less obtrusive.

Supporting otherenvironmentallyfriendly modesThe most environmentallyfriendly transport modesbar none are walking andcycling. A pedestrian or acyclist gets from A to Bconsuming no fossil fuel,generating no pollution,making very little noiseand taking up very littlespace—and keeping fit atthe same time. Provisionof walking and cyclinginfrastructure costs verylittle money comparedwith roads or railways.

An environmentally friendly transportpolicy needs to support these ‘zero-impact’ modes as well as publictransport. Supporting a better walkingenvironment goes without saying, sinceevery public transport user is also apedestrian. Support for cycling is alsoimportant, as the combination of publictransport and cycling provides manypeople with the opportunity to exerciseand/or reduce their environmental impactwhile travelling long distances to work,without being obliged to cycle the fulldistance both ways.

As we discuss further in Part II, the way toencourage people to use their cars lessoften is to create alternative choices. Acommitment to supporting all threemodes—public transport, walking andcycling—makes a range of choicesavailable and thereby provides morereasons for doing without the car.

Greenhouse friendly transportClimate change due to the ‘enhancedgreenhouse effect’ is recognised as themost severe threat to the globalenvironment posed by humans. Thegreenhouse effect is a naturalphenomenon where a small amount ofcarbon dioxide in the atmosphere acts asa blanket, trapping heat from the Sun andkeeping the Earth warm. An ‘enhanced’greenhouse effect arises when theconcentration of carbon dioxide andother greenhouse gases increasesdramatically, so that more heat is trappedand the Earth’s temperature rises.

Since the Industrial Revolution, atmosphericcarbon dioxide has increased dramaticallydue to the burning of fossil fuels. Carbondioxide is an unavoidable byproduct ofthe combustion of hydrocarbon fuelssuch as oil, coal and natural gas. Since1998, Australia has been the country withthe highest per capita emissions of allgreenhouse gases, total emissions havingrisen by 20% since 1990. Oil-fuelled roadtransport accounts for one-fifth of theseemissions, and this is the fastest-risingcomponent of our total emissions, havinggrown by 25% since 1990.12 Closer tohome the news is even worse: transportaccounts for 50% of all householdemissions, compared to just 16% forhome heating and cooling (PTO for graph).

It is the explosion in private car trips androad freight that explains why ouremissions have increased so rapidly. Butif emissions rise quickly due to changinghabits, they can also fall just as quickly ifhabits change again. If our Kyotoobligations and our commitment tomitigating climate change are not to besimply thrown in the bin, our best hope offulfilling them lies in a shift from privatecars to public transport.

The problem is that this mobility-at-all-costs approach can wind up causingthe kind of social alienation it wassupposed to cure.

It was the architect and social theoristLewis Mumford who first observed thatcar-dominated urban sprawl was turningcities into ‘anti-cities’.15 But it was DonaldAppleyard in 1970 who first observed theeffect of real traffic on real communities,with alarming conclusions.16 Appleyardchose three San Francisco streets whichlooked superficially very similar other thanhaving different levels of traffic. He theninterviewed a dozen residents of eachstreet for an hour each.

•On the most lightly-trafficked street,with 2,000 vehicles per day, peoplereported having on average 3.0 friendsand 6.3 acquaintances.

•On the most heavily-trafficked street,with 16,000 vehicles per day, peoplereported having on average 0.9 friendsand 3.1 acquaintances.

The contrast between the [heavy andlight] streets was striking. On the onehand alienation, on the otherfriendliness and involvement.

Neighbourhood activists17 have drawnattention to the various ways car-dependent‘mobility’ destroys local communities:

•Travelling further to accomplish thesame objectives as before.

•Increasing the frequency of trips onlyto reduce the time spent at thedestination.

•Spending a greater proportion of thetime travelling and less on the reasonfor the travel.

•Decline in walking and cycling as viablemodes of transport.

•Erosion of space for walking andcycling.

•Destruction of corner shops andneighbourhood centres.

•Fear of crime, due to the reducedpresence of other people in the streets.

•Atomisation of society, as we come todepend more and more on our familyand close friends for social contact.

All these consequences of car-dependence tend to reduce the amount ofcasual contact we have with one another;the result is decreased neighbourlinessand increased ‘tribalisation’. On publictransport, on the other hand, we arebound to encounter people outside ourclose circle; the result is an increasedawareness of the society we live in.

SOCIETY

Public Transport: the Friendly Way to TravelThe benefits of mass public transport useover mass car dependence are notlimited to economic and environmentaleffects. Even if solar-powered, zero-emission cars suddenly became cheap toown and operate, and unobtrusiveunderground freeways cheap to build,they would still be bad for our cities innumerous other ways.

Making a City: Social Exchange andthe Downside of ‘Mobility’Parents may record four extra trips aweek driving their children to sportingactivities. But is this a benefit when tenyears ago these same children couldplay cricket and tennis in their ownstreet or at a neighbourhood park?

—David Engwicht

It’s often argued that the reason we needmore freeways is to encourage ‘mobility’.This reflects a fundamental human need:no-one wants to be trapped as if in aprison cell, without access to employmentand recreation and without a rich networkof friends and acquaintances. Thepurpose of a transport system is to makeall this available to people.

But the road lobby’s ‘mobility’ stretchesthis to absurd limits.

If current transport policy has a goal, it isto encourage people to own as manycars as possible and to drive them as faras possible and as often as possible,with as much public subsidy as possible.

—John Whitelegg, speaking in Melbourne

Of course, public transport cannot avoidthe use of fossil fuels. Trains and tramsare powered by electricity, which inVictoria comes mainly from coal-firedpower stations. Buses run on diesel orcompressed natural gas (CNG), bothfossil fuels, although gas has much lowergreenhouse gas emissions per unit ofenergy. The real reason public transporthas lower greenhouse emissions is that itrequires less energy per passenger. Thisis a natural result of the economies ofscale referred to in the previous section.

If 500 people drive to the City fromFrankston in 500 separate cars, they willconsume at least 2000 litres of petrol andgenerate 4.6 tonnes of carbon dioxideequivalent.13 Those same 500 people onone 6-car Melbourne train—around halfthe train’s capacity—will typicallyconsume 800 kWh of electricity (includingair conditioning) on the same journeyfrom Frankston. Supposing all thatelectricity were generated from browncoal, this will generate 0.96 tonnes ofgreenhouse emissions14—around one-fifththat of the 500 car journeys. Even if the500 people carpooled with 4 people percar, the greenhouse emissions would stillbe 20% less if they took the train instead.

Independence and its LossIndependence is a value commonlya s s o c i a t e d w i t h c a r s . Ye t c a rdependence has led to a frightening lossof independence in people withoutaccess to their own car: particularlychildren, the elderly and the disabled.

In days gone by it was common forchildren to walk or catch public transportto school unaccompanied by adults. Thiswas important to their psychologicaldevelopment as human beings, aschildren who are free to moveindependently create their own learningand social experiences, and acquirehabits of independent thought and action.

Nowadays, car dependence and theresulting urban blight has deprivedchildren of this freedom to move aroundindependently, and instead made themdependent on adults and their cars. Theeffect in Australia has not been quite asdramatic as in Britain, where thenumber of children walking to schoolunaccompanied has plummeted from80% in 1970 to 8% in 1990. Nonetheless,here as in Britain the development of

independence in children is beingcompromised as never before.

Public transport can help. Endowed witha proper staff presence, it is a reasonablysafe mode for children to travel on eitheralone or accompanied by parents. Manyof us who grew up in the suburbs can stillrecall a sense of liberation coming fromour first trip alone, on public transport, toan unfamiliar part of town. This childhoodrite of passage can predate the gaining ofa driver’s licence by many years.

Even the independence of able-bodiedadult car owners is compromised by cardependence. The loss of childhoodindependence has given us thephenomenon of ‘Mum’s Taxi’, replicated amillion times every day in Melbourne. (Inthe morning peak, much suburban trafficcongestion is due to parents drivingchildren to school.) Car ownership alsoentails a steady stream of expenditure onloan payments, petrol, maintenance,repairs, registration and insurance, whichlimits people’s financial capacity topartake in more enjoyable and rewarding

activities. This is particularly so in theouter suburbs of cities like Melbourne,where many families on modest incomesmust pay to maintain two or three carsout of sheer necessity, because thereisn’t any public transport to speak of.

SummaryA shift in Melbourne’s transport objectivesfrom car dependence to mass publictransport use is called for on all thecriteria that make up the Triple BottomLine. Economically, public transport ismore energy-efficient and space-efficientthan freeways, and benefits from greateruse while roads deteriorate with greateruse. Environmentally, public transport iseasier on the air we breathe and thegreen space we cherish, and is animportant component in fighting climatechange. Socially, public transport canhelp reverse the trend toward brokencommunities and urban blight resultingfrom car dependence, and can helpreassert the independence of childrenand other marginalised groups in society.

Lines show relationships between residents.Source: Appleyard, D: Livable Streets, as reproduced in Engwicht, D:

Towards an Eco-City, p.48.

Light traffic: 2,000 vehicles per day

Heavy traffic: 16,000 vehicles per day

no grand proposals for undergroundmetro systems, levitating trains, or tramson every arterial road. Indeed, apart fromone or two new rail lines and some minorextensions, Melbourne already has all theinfrastructure it needs to support the bestpublic transport system in the world.

Sensible transport planning focusses onpeople: specifically, the people whocurrently drive everywhere and might bepersuaded to use public transportinstead. It asks what their needs arebefore it asks what technologies areavailable, or how they can be fooled intoliking public transport. It means revisitingall those bad experiences that put peopleoff using public transport, and seeingwhat the real problems have been.

Even the public transport proposals thatoccasionally emerge from thebureaucracy are of the sort that only aroad engineer could dream up. As withthe airport fast train proposal scrapped in2001, these proposals are almost alwaysimpractical, expensive, and driven bytechnological fads rather than people’sreal needs. Usually there is aninexpensive alternative that meetspeople’s needs, but which has alreadybeen ruled out by the engineers.

The following section outlines analternative vision for public transport. It isperhaps the sort of vision we might seecoming from our government planners, ifthey permitted themselves to thinkdifferently. It is a realistic vision, in that itdraws on the best aspects of real publictransport systems around the world andtailors them to Australian conditions ofmoderate population density andconvenient car travel. So you will read of

Seeking the AlternativeThere are two ways in which we canrespond to the travel needs of people inMelbourne and Victoria. We can continueto build freeways and car parks untilMelbourne looks like Los Angeles, smellslike Los Angeles and has Los Angeles-style traffic congestion. Alternatively, wecan give people the means to overcomecar dependence, by improving publictransport to the point where it provides acompetitive alternative to the private car.

Judging by the outcome of theMetropolitan Strategy forums, it is thesecond of these alternatives that excitesMelburnians today. Sadly, the responsefrom the bureaucracy is hardlyencouraging. The ‘twin pillars’ of Victoriangovernment transport planning consist of:

1. avoiding responsibility for the problemswith public transport, or denying thatthey exist; and

2. building more freeways and car parks.

Part II:Making Public Transport Work For Everyone

Only 15% of the traffic on the Eastern Freeway is headed toward the Tullamarine Freeway; most of it is going to the city. A train line to East Doncaster via themedian would cost $350 million and cut the traffic jam. Extending the freeway westward would cost at least $600 million.

The problems with transport inMelbourne are twofold: on the one handinadequate services, and on the other aninstitutional culture of defeat that leavesthe road lobby in charge of transportplanning. To see how our planningauthorities got into such a sorry staterequires us to look at some history.

Transport in Melbourne:A Brief HistoryThe World’s First ‘Urban Sprawl’The world’s first passenger railways datefrom the mid-1800s, and street tramwaysfrom the final decades of that century.Melbourne became an established cityfollowing the 1850s gold rush, and so waswell-placed to take advantage of thesetransport systems from the very beginning.

Australia’s first passenger trains startedrunning in Melbourne in 1854, betweenFlinders Street and Port Melbourne.These were soon followed by services toother nascent Melbourne suburbs, andby country services to Geelong, Bendigoand Ballarat. Melbourne appears to bethe second city in the world (afterLondon) to have built railways fortransport within an urban area. Bycomparison, New York commencedbuilding urban railways only in 1872 andParis in 1900.18

These early suburban railways were builtby a private company, the Melbourne andHobson’s Bay Railway Company. Within acouple of decades the company was infinancial difficulties, and was acquired in1878 by the government operator, theVictorian Railways. This precipitated oneof the greatest urban expansions inMelbourne’s history, the ‘land boom’ ofthe 1880s. Year by year, new railway linespushed into Melbourne’s rural hinterland,followed soon after by the establishmentof new suburbs such as Box Hill, Lilydale,Oakleigh, Mordialloc, Epping andFawkner. By the end of the 1880s most ofthe Melbourne suburban train network aswe know it today was in place.19

In the 1890s Melbourne was, byn ineteenth-century s tandards, agargantuan, sprawling, low-density citydespite the fact that cars had scarcelybeen invented. Rather, the world’s firstsuburban commuters went to work bysteam train. The proliferation of cabletrams in the 1890s, followed by electrictrams in the early twentieth century,allowed more new suburbs to grow up inbetween the rail corridors. Publictransport had shown itself capable ofservicing a spread-out city, havingallowed Melburnians to live in the suburbslong before most of us had cars.

For many years,the pattern ofdevelopment inMelbourne wasthat railways ortramways wereextended to ap r e v i o u s l yundeveloped area,and suburband e v e l o p m e n tfollowed. Thiscontrasts with thep r e s e n t - d a yapproach, whereen t i re newsuburbs grow upwith no supportingi n f r a s t r u c t u r eother than a fewtwo-lane farmroads, and residents must fight for years toget decent transport services. Littlewonder that Melburnians are now sodependent on cars!

An Exercise in Free-MarketIncompetenceHaving proved so successful in buildingMelbourne’s suburbs, public transportoperators in the early twentieth centurybecame complacent. Many of theproblems that plague our public transporttoday were evident even before WorldWar I. Melbourne had three transportmodes—trains, trams and buses—whichfrom the very start were run as completelyseparate entities with no thought tocoordination. The trains were run by theVictorian Railways, the trams by theMelbourne and Metropolitan TramwaysBoard (MMTB), and the buses by aplethora of competing private operators.

To an economic ra t iona l is t , theorganisation of Melbourne publictransport would have seemed almostperfect. The Railways, the MMTB andevery single bus operator had their ownroutes, timetables and fares, andcompeted for passengers with all theother operators. But to an ordinary userof public transport, the system left a lot tobe desired. If you wanted to take a bus tothe station and then catch the train to thecity, you had to pay two fares, one for thebus and one for the train. There was notimetable coordination so you were likelyto have a long wait at the station. Andthere was no guarantee that the buswould still run to the station next week:after all, the bus operator had nocommercial interest in deliveringpassengers to its competitor.

The practice of artificially boostingpatronage by poaching anotheroperator’s passengers dates back to theturn of the century. Historians observe

that even then, tramways were beingconstructed in a way calculated to suckpassengers away from the trains, ratherthan to complement the train system.20

Bus operators became adept at runningtheir own services into the city alongestablished tram routes, and timing theirbuses to arrive just before the trams.Other services ran parallel to railway lines.For many years there were three parallelroutes from Surrey Hills to the city—atrain, a tram and a bus—but othercorridors seen as less lucrative had noservices at all. Rather than build acoordinated network, the MMTBdiscouraged transfers by terminating itstram lines half a mile from the nearestrailway station, as is still the case today.

In no other city in the world was publictransport operated in such an unplanned,laissez-faire manner as in Melbourne.Other cities, from London to New York toZurich, conceived their public transportsystems as a coherent whole. No artificialdistinctions were drawn between train,tram and bus planning. Instead, it wasthought natural that someone whoneeded to catch a train but lived somedistance from the station should be ableto catch a tram or bus to the station, thentransfer immediately to a train. Cities suchas Zurich and Toronto made this eveneasier by operating multimodal faresystems, an innovation that wasn’t seenin Melbourne until 1981.

So in most cities around the world, peopleused public transport because it providedgenuinely good service; in Melbourne,people used it because they had noalternative. Life in the suburbs had beenmade possible by public transport, and aslong as Melbourne’s suburbs remained a‘captive market’ for public transport,operators didn’t have to worry too muchabout the quality of their services.

1. POLICY, MANAGEMENT AND OWNERSHIP

Planning for RoadsIf you have them by the budgets, theirhearts and minds will follow.—attributed to a WA Commissioner of Main Roads

While public transport in Melbourne hasnever been subject to any coherentplanning process, the road lobby has hada coherent plan, and pursued itaggressively, for at least the last threedecades. They have accordingly beensuccessful in doing precisely what publictransport operators have failed to do forhalf a century: they have created andsustained enormous growth in journeysby their preferred mode (freeways).

All current freeway plans in Melbournestem from a Los Angeles-style blueprintformulated in 1969. Produced by thesame American consultants that imposedvast freeway grids on American cities fromDallas to Detroit, the 1969 MelbourneTransportation Plan was truly a concretevision for Melbourne. It proposed amassive grid of freeways with a totallength of 500 kilometres, cutting swathesthrough Melbourne’s suburbs and costingbillions of 1969 dollars. (See map.)

The planners of the day called the 1969plan a ‘balanced’ approach to transport.Alongside the road proposals were publictransport proposals that included new raillines to East Doncaster and Rowville, andsome tramway extensions. Much wasmade of these public transport initiativesin the publicity leaflets for the plan, withthe freeway initiatives relegated to theback pages. However, these worthyinitiatives accounted for just 10% of thetotal plan budget: the other 90% was tobe spent on freeways. To this day thisremains the definition of ‘balance’ in theVictorian transport bureaucracy.

The Country Roads Board (predecessorto Vicroads) adopted the 1969 freewayplan as its blueprint, and the road lobbyhas campaigned piece-by-piece for itsimplementation ever since. In the map ofthe 1969 plan we can already discern theScoresby Freeway (F35), the Merri CreekFreeway (F2), the Western and NorthernRing Roads (F5), the Eastern Freeway(F19) and the proposed Eastern RingRoad through Heidelberg (F18).

In these other cities, public transport wasboth well-used and well-planned. Thismeant that when burgeon ing carowne rsh ip t h rea tened to d ra i npassengers from public transport,planners were able to improve their publictransport services to make themcompetitive with cars. Some patronageloss was inevitable, but those thatremained were sufficient to keep publictransport use relatively high, at 25% to50% of all trips.22

Melbourne’s public transport was well-used, but atrociously planned. ABalkanised system of competing train, tramand bus services with no coordinationproved to be no match for the convenienceof car travel, and Melburnians abandoned itin droves. When entire new suburbsstarted appearing in areas remote fromexisting public transport services, it wasno-one’s job to ensure public transportservices were provided in these suburbs,and so none were provided. Thesepostwar suburbs, from Westmeadows toWheelers Hill, remain without effectivepublic transport to this day.

In the early 1980s some small steps weretaken to stem the decline. Multimodalticketing was introduced, and thesuburban railways and MMTB broughtunder a single Metropolitan TransportAuthority—‘the Met’. At their own request,the private bus operators that hadn’t yetgone bankrupt were made contractors tothe MTA. As a result, in the late 1980s theshare of travel by public transport actuallygrew, for the first and only time sinceWorld War II.

Unfortunately, the formation of theMTA (later the Public TransportCorporation) did not bring with itany real commitment tocoordinated planning. There wasno effort made to coordinate busand train timetables, whichremained and still remain ashaphazard as they ever were.Service frequencies remained atthe levels to which they haddwindled due to the decline inpassengers. Bus services in theouter suburbs continued to run tosheep-paddock standards as theyhad 50 years before. As a result, bythe 1990s the trend toward overalldecline had reasserted itself.

The Coming of the CarAll the above helps answer the CentralParadox of Melbourne public transport.Melbourne has one of the most extensivetrain and tram networks for a city of its sizeanywhere in the world. It has 14 suburbantrain lines; Toronto, a city of similar size andpopulation, has 4. Its 342 kilometres oftramway exceed the length of the entireParis Métro.21 Yet only 7% of journeys inMelbourne are made by public transport;the vast majority are by car. It’s typical inMelbourne to observe congested six-laneroads running parallel to railway lines onwhich the trains are almost empty.

To resolve the paradox it pays to look atthe pattern of public transport use inMelbourne after World War II, comparedwith some other cities. (See graph.)Between 1950 and 1980, Melbournewent from having almost the highest rateof public transport use in the world tohaving almost the lowest. In other words,when the motor car came along in thepostwar era, Melburnians embraced itand abandoned public transport fasterthan in almost every other Western city—including North American cities.

This says more about public transport inMelbourne than it does about cars. Allover the world, cars are seen as anattractive way to get around. Even inEuropean cities with high rates of publictransport use, car ownership is as high orhigher than in Melbourne. What we see isthat in other cities with high publictransport use, public transport hasproved better able to compete with thecar’s attractions than it has in Melbourne.

Victoria’s road planners have pressed forthese freeways despite the publicopposition that has developed since 1969,and despite the discrediting of the analysisthat underlay the original plan. Just twomonths after the release of the plan, thegreat ‘Freeway Revolt’ was kickedoff in America by the Governor ofMassachusetts, who cancelled all ofBoston’s inner-city freeways. In March1973 Victoria’s Premier Rupert Hamer didlikewise, cancelling most of the inner-cityfreeways in the 1969 plan. Meanwhile, theWhitlam Government was threatening tocut off all Federal funding for urbanfreeways. In due course the 1969 plan wasto be described by transport specialists inless than enthusiastic tones as:

…an unconvincing work presented with allthe glib political clichés that one has learnedto distrust. It is based on the earlier Americantransportation study techniques, by nowthoroughly discredited.

—J.M. Thompson, 197723

The planners in the CRB persisteddespite the apparent setbacks.

Go quietly on freeway matters at themoment…these are frustrating times forus all, but the pendulum will swing ourway again.

—private memo from Chairman of CRB, 197324

Indeed, ever since the late 1970s the roadlobby’s fortunes have been improving inVictoria. Despite ongoing publicopposition to freeways, a succession ofState Governments has been content togive the road lobby more or less free rein,either overtly in spite of public opinion, orcovertly under the excuse that ‘there is noalternative’. Even under less sympatheticgovernments, Vicroads and itspredecessors have successfully lobbiedfor freeways by relabelling them as ‘arterialroads’ or ‘bypasses’, by trumpetingdubious economic benefits, or byproposing them a little at a time (so-called‘salami tactics’).

The 1969 Freeway Plan for Melbourne (overlaid on current urban area)

Copyright Melway Publishing 2002. Reproduced from Melway Edition 29 with permission.

the separate budget for road fundingand the separation of VicRoads fromthe other transport functions within theDepartment of Infrastructure,have notencouraged such a holistic view.—Infrastructure Planning Council, Final Report, 2002

dysfunctional ticketing system, which notonly starves the operators of revenuethrough fare evasion, but also makes thesystem less attractive to passengers,thus compounding the problem further.

Even when politicians are motivated tosupport new public transport initiatives,they are drawn into the ‘balancedtransport’ ideology of the road lobby.Again and again a genuinely sincere publictransport proposal becomes a mere tokengesture attached as a footnote to afreeway proposal. Alternatively, the cost ofthe proposal is revised upward andupward by poorly-qualified road engineersor insincere bureaucrats until it becomesimpossible to support. Effectively we aretold that we cannot do anything seriousfor public transport until we have built theroad lobby’s wish-list of freeways, bywhich point public transport has beenfatally undermined.

A change is needed, and it has to comechiefly through a new approach to theplanning and operation of transport ratherthan through expensive new infrastructure.

Transport planning is a subset of theoverall broader plan and a coordinatedand integrated approach to transportplanning is required…The currentinstitutional arrangements especially

Making the Change: BetterTransport PlanningIn Melbourne, transport planning hasbeen overtly run by the road lobby since1997, when the Departments ofTransport, Planning and LocalGovernment were merged into theDepartment of Infrastructure (DoI),headed up by engineers recruited fromVicroads. The Bracks Governmentelected in 1999 retained this structure,which institutionalises the road lobby atthe very top of the planning bureaucracy.In lobbying politicians for new freeways,the DoI bureaucrats are assisted not onlyby Vicroads itself but also by theengineering departments of Victoria’smunicipal councils, which with very fewexceptions are dominated by the road-engineering mindset.

While Vicroads has both a plan and asuccessful lobbying strategy, nothing ofthe sort exists for public transport.Privatisation of train and tram operationsin 1999 has returned us to the Balkanisedsituation of most of the twentieth century,with operators fighting over a dwindlingmarket share. What little genuinecoordination did exist between buses andtrains was abolished in the 1990s. Thesituation is not helped by the

How Salami Tactics Can Undermine Opposition(even in Malvern)The term Salami tactics originated with the Yes Minister TVseries. It refers to the common bureaucratic practice ofproposing unpopular measures in a piecemeal fashion, so thatpeople see the relatively innocuous pieces rather than thecumulative effect. In the case of freeway planning it meansbuilding half a freeway, allowing traffic to build up, then buildingthe other half to solve a ‘traffic problem’ that no-oneremembers them creating in the first place.

The present-day Monash Freeway is an unbroken road runningfrom the City to Dandenong. It is the freeway that was neversupposed to be built.

Its innermost part between Richmond and Burnley isMelbourne’s first urban freeway, dating all the way back to1952. By the early 1970s, piecemeal extensions had broughtthe so-called South Eastern Freeway out as far as Kooyong.The CRB planned to further extend it, which would haveentailed demolishing a number of houses and destroying theGardiners Creek valley in leafy Glen Iris and East Malvern.

In 1973, Premier Hamer responded to the resulting publicoutcry by cancelling the South Eastern Freeway extensionthrough East Malvern. However, he allowed the MulgraveFreeway between Clayton North and Dandenong to proceed.It would have seemed unreasonable not to do so: after all, thelatter freeway followed a planned reservation, involved noproperty acquisition, and threatened no creek valleys. Such isthe logic of salami tactics.

The road planners in the CRB simply continued with their originalplans in secret. As the official history of Vicroads admits, “therecan be little doubt that some Country Roads Board seniorofficers were reluctant to accept the restrictions on freewaydevelopment.” After the link through East Malvern wascancelled, the road planners continued to buy up propertiesalong the supposedly abandoned route.25 Meanwhile theMulgrave Freeway extended inwards, eventually reachingWarrigal Road in Chadstone.

Eventually in the late 1980s, the road planners persuaded thesupposedly ‘anti-freeway’ Cain Government to allow an‘arterial road’ to be built along Gardiners Creek connecting theSouth Eastern and Mulgrave Freeways. By then, the pressureto ‘fill the gap’ between two freeways separated by a mere fivekilometres had become politically irresistible. In essence, a linkthrough East Malvern was always going to be the inevitableconsequence of allowing construction of the MulgraveFreeway.

Nonetheless, the Cain Government still managed to put upsome token resistance. To reassure opponents that they werenot simply allowing another freeway to be built, the ‘arterialroad’ included four at-grade intersections with traffic lightswhen it opened in 1988. This drew justifiable ridicule fromMelburnians for five years until the Kennett Government saw fitto grade-separate the intersections. In 1996 the governmentannounced the unbroken freeway from the City toDandenong—just as the road planners in 1973 had intended.

The Perth Example

Events in Perth following the election ofthe Gallop Government in 2001 point towhat can be achieved on a practical levelin a relatively short time. Despite emergingpolitical support for better public transportin Perth, transport policy prior to 2001was still essentially run by the road lobby,who allocated large sums of money togenerous road projects and was poised tobuild more freeways after the election.

The new government was of the view thatthe people of Perth had a more urgentneed, and desire, for public transportthan for freeways, and had just won anelection on the strength of this view. Inshort order the road projects were put onhold, the Department of Main Roadsdissolved, and transport planning takenaway from the road engineers and givento the urban planners. The newDepartment of Planning andInfrastructure has already commenced acomprehensive overhaul of publictransport routes and timetables.

This is not the action of a bunch of radicalgreenies: just the response of a quiteconservative Australian government to aclearly perceived need for institutionalchange. It brings Perth into line with mostother cities of the world, where transportplanning is run by transport planners andlocal communities rather than by thosewith a vested interest in more roads. Andif this can happen in a city with lowerurban density than Melbourne, no trams,and only four train lines, it is notunrealistic to call for similar institutionalchange in Melbourne.

Applying the ‘Perth model’ to Melbournemeans overhauling the presentDepartment of Infrastructure toemphasise the need to plan beforespending money on big projects. (Note

tha t t he Pe r th equ i va l en t i sca l led the Department of Planning andInfrastructure.) Instead of a separateagency in the form of Vicroads presentingone freeway plan after another to thegovernment as a fait accompli, thereshould be one group of planners with asingle budget and a brief to pursue thebest transport projects according totransparent criteria. (Recommendation 10)

Essentially the same recommendationwas put to the Government by theInfrastructure Planning Council (a groupof largely conservative financiers) inSeptember 2002, and rejected—presumably on advice from Vicroads.

Coordination vs. Privatisation:Better Transport ManagementHistorically, the ‘free-market’ approach totransport management only wound updriving away passengers, leaving thosewho remained with poorer services thatrequired ever-greater subsidies. Today’sprivatised public transport arrangements,that encourage operators to competewith one another for passengers ratherthan coordinate their services, are unlikelyto deliver anything better.

Privatisation allows government plannersto offload responsibility for serviceprovision onto individual train, tram andbus operators who have no incentive tocoordinate their timetables. Operators areinstead rewarded for undermining theviability of other public transport modesby running their own parallel services.Commuters from Doncaster and Box HillNorth are now ferried all the way into thecity by the National Bus Company, wherepreviously they would have taken a bus toBox Hill station and caught the train. The‘express’ bus journey via the EasternFreeway takes between 35 and 50minutes, compared to a 25-minutecombined bus/train journey via Box Hill(achievable with timetable coordinationand better express running). Thearrangement leaves commuters worseoff, but generates precious extra revenuefor National Bus.

Even when private bus operatorsthemselves seek to improve theirservices, they are stymied by thebureaucracy. The Ventura Bus Companyin 2001 wanted to introduce Sundayservices on some of its eastern suburbanroutes, at a cost of some $1.5 million, butwas told by the Department ofInfrastructure that there was ‘no budget’for the extra services. Meanwhile theDepartment was spending $17 million onautomated signs at selected bus stops(including Ventura’s) so that passengershave electronic confirmation of the factthat their bus doesn’t run on Sundays.

To unravel this mess doesn’t requireresuming public ownership of trains,trams and buses. However, it will requireresuming public control, which is adifferent thing altogether. What will beneeded is a Transport Authority with thepower to set timetables for all transportmodes, whether publicly or privatelyoperated. The mode l fo r th is ist he Verkehsverbund or ‘TransportCommunity’ found in many cities inGermany and central Europe. These areregional transport companies jointlyowned by municipal authorities andprivate investors. An example is Zurich’s

doing the exact opposite of what publictransport operators in Melbourne havedone over the last fifty years. Rather thangiving up in the face of competition, ourtransport planners must adopt aproactive approach like that of theirroad planning colleagues. They mustanticipate and provide for future growth,while recognising that future growth willrequire a system planned like the roadsystem, as a single integrated entityoffering high levels of service.

The benefits of a proactive approach arestarting to be seen in Perth, where publictransport’s share of travel is on theincrease. Patronage on the rail systemhas increased from 6 million passengersa year to 30 million over just seven yearsfrom 1995 to 2002, and is expected todouble again with the construction of anew line to the southern suburbs.27

In February 2002, Transport MinisterPeter Batchelor approved additionalpayments of over $100 million to theoperators, which were said to benecessary to keep their operations viable.This $100 million came on top of contractsubsidies and ‘incentive payments’ thatalready exceeded the cost of running theold PTC (which did not have to generatea return to shareholders on top of theirrunning costs, and had economies ofscale through not having to rununcoordinated fiefdoms). There is everyindication that more top-up subsidies, ora major renegotiation of the contracts, willbe required in the near future, with at leastone operator rumoured to be on theverge of bankruptcy.

So far, the government has not requiredthe private operators to make anytangible improvement to their service inreturn for the extra payouts. It has simplyhanded money over to the privateoperators with no strings attached,despite having no obligation to do so.These non-contractual subsidies couldeasily be used by the government as anopportunity to reclaim the planningpowers that would allow a ZVV-likeauthority to be created. Indeed there isevery chance the operators would yieldthese powers voluntarily, just as theprivate bus operators did in 1983, if itwere explained how their commercialviability depends on it.

If we are to make public transportcompete with the private car, it will mean

ZVV (Zurcher Verkehsverbund), whichcoordinates fares, timetables, andfunding for the mostly private operators inthe Swiss Canton of Zurich.

The Verkehsverbund concept originatedin Hamburg, in response to coordinationproblems that sound remarkably likeMelbourne’s:

In new residential areas no agreementcould be reached on transport services.There was no central planning, centraldrafting of timetables or coordination ofconnections. Each undertaking pursuedits own interests with no regard forothers.

—Thomson, Great Cities and Their Traffic 26

To implement a ZVV-like Transport Authority inMelbourne (Recommendation 9) will of courserequire the consent of the private operators,whose franchises are guaranteed by contractssigned in 1999. However, securing thiscooperation should not prove difficult, given thestringent provisions of these same contracts.

Like their twentieth-century predecessorsin Melbourne, the operators are finding itdifficult to operate in a Balkanisedenvironment without additional subsidies.Yet built into the contracts is theassumption that patronage will increasedramatically between now and 2010, sothat the level of subsidy can be graduallyreduced. As these reductions come intoeffect, with no huge patronage increaseyet to be seen, the operators are alreadyfeeling the pinch, and begging the BracksGovernment for more money.

The most urgent changes required toattract ‘choice’ passengers to Melbourne’spublic transport are on the ground, wherepeople actually catch trains, trams andbuses—or more often don’t!

This section gives primacy to ‘services’over ‘infrastructure’ because 90 per centof the problems with public transport inMelbourne have nothing to do withinsufficient infrastructure, and everythingto do with failure to make the best use ofwhat we have. The real challenge is toprovide public transport users with afirst-rate service approaching the speedand convenience of private car travel.Here’s how.

Minimising the total journey timeBrian is a student at Monash Universityand lives in Boronia. Boronia is about 30minutes from Monash by car, but the trainfrom Boronia goes nowhere near Monash.There is a bus route from Boronia toMonash (route 737), but for reasonsunknown to Brian this bus meandersthrough the back streets of Bayswater,Scoresby and Glen Waverley, taking a full90 minutes to do the 30-minute journey.Brian does not use the 737; instead, hecatches the train to Ferntree Gully, jumpson a bus (the 693) that runs directly alongFerntree Gully Road, and walks theremaining distance to Monash. Even thistrip takes close to an hour, mainly becausethe bus spends a large proportion of itsjourney waiting at red lights.

Chris is one of Brian’s lecturers atMonash Uni. She lives in Wheelers Hill,only 10 minutes’ drive from Monash andin theory a quick bus trip along WellingtonRoad. However, Chris gave up on publictransport long ago. Of the three busroutes along Wellington Road, only oneruns on Saturdays (with one bus everytwo hours) and none at all run onSundays. On weekdays the last busleaves Monash at 6:53pm; on Saturdaysthe last bus is at 5:39pm. Even in peakhours, the bus frequency alongWellington Road is every 20 minutes—twice as long as it takes to travel by carfrom Wheelers Hill to Monash.

Mr Brockbank says he uses publictransport because he is currently without adriver’s licence. If he could drive, he would.He says the system is inept because it isunreliable…too often services don’t matchup. If one mode of transport is late, he cansometimes wait another 40 minutes for thenext connection.

—The Sunday Age, 7 April 2002

Perhaps the greatest source of frustrationfor users of Melbourne public transport isthe amount of time it takes to getanywhere, compared with driving the car.According to the bureaucrats and private

operators, this is just the way things are.But there is no law of nature that sayspublic transport has to be twice as slowas driving; it’s just that in Melbourne therehas never been any concerted effort tomake it more responsive.

There are many sides to the problem ofreducing journey times, and so a packageof solutions is required. However, eachpart of the solution is quite simple in itself.The most important components are highfrequency, traffic priority and coordination.

High Frequency = Shorter waiting timesThe most common complaint aboutpublic transport goes something like: “Iarrived at the tram/bus/train stop andnothing turned up for half an hour; I couldhave driven home in less time than that!”The importance of waiting time cannot beoverstated: transport experts haveobserved that commuters perceive timespent waiting to have up to six times thevalue of time spent inside the vehicle.28

Waiting time is determined primarily byservice frequency. In Melbourne,frequencies are usually unattractive—especially outside peak hour—althoughsome improvements have been made inrecent years. Passengers can wait 30 oreven 60 minutes between trains, whiletram passengers often wait 20 minutes.Buses are even worse.

Sometimes passengers can reducewaiting by using timetables, but most of ushave no control over factors like the time amovie or doctor’s appointment finishes, orhow long the shopping takes, so atimetable is often useless. Nor do peoplelike having their lives run by timetables.

How often should services run? Clearly,the time people will wait depends on thelength of the journey. Most passengerswould endure a ten-minute wait to travel58 kilometres from Melbourne toPakenham but not to go three blocks upBourke Street.

Some assistance can be gained bylooking at successful public transportsystems. Toronto’s subway trains runevery six minutes or better, even at 1am.Vancouver runs rail services at five-minutefrequencies, and Montreal at eight-minutefrequencies. Toronto’s suburbs look verymuch like Melbourne’s, but buses in thesesuburbs typically run every ten minutes.

A study of customers at banks andgovernment offices in Melbourne showedmost people were only prepared to waitsix minutes before becoming frustrated.For short public transport trips, nobodyshould be kept waiting longer than this.Furthermore, people’s tolerance of delaydoes not increase at night or onS u n d a y s . W e a d v o c a t e a b a s i c10 minute frequency for all services,reducing to 15 minutes in the late evening(Recommendation 1).

The flip side of the waiting time coin isreliability. A five-minute service is of noavail if, in fact, passengers wait 20minutes for four trams to arrive at once. Infirst-class public transport systems,cancellations and late running are virtuallyunknown. This should not come as asurprise: trains run on segregated tracks,with nothing but other trains to delaythem. Melbourne has 15% more trainsthan are required to operate currentpeak-hour service, so it should befeasible to eliminate cancellations.29

To a commuter like Mr Brockbank abovethis may seem like a pipedream, but it isnot. The Victorian Railways achieved100% reliability under Harold Clapp in the1920s, eliciting the following quip: “MrClapp’s fiendish efficiency means that wehave lost another excuse for being late inthe mornings.” Rumour has it that theMet was on the point of a similarachievement in the mid-1980s.

2. SERVICES AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Improving Tram and Bus SpeedsFor on-street public transport, simple improvements in tram andbus priority can drastically reduce running times. Trams inparticular are held up by queueing cars, turning cars and parkedcars, and disrupted by traffic lights operating on cycles thatfavour cars. Just about every tram passenger has had thedelightful experience of seeing one traffic light after another turnamber just as the tram is about to enter the intersection. Theymay be forgiven for suspecting a malevolent force is afoot!

Some attempts have been made to give trams priority atintersections, through special tram-only signal phases, but theseoften leave tram passengers even worse off. For example, atbusy Kew Junction the signals send city-bound cars throughfirst, trams last. This delays tram passengers, and also ensurestrams arrive at the next intersection behind a long queue of cars.

Trams can only operate effectively with the maximum possiblepriority over other traffic. Melbourne can learn from Zurich, whichhas turned its tram system into the most effective in the world bysystematically eliminating every cause of tram delays. (See boxopposite.) A less ambitious programme than Zurich’s(Recommendation 5) will still ensure dramatic improvements tothe operating speed and reliability of the tram system.

A more limited program is required for the bus network,concentrating on busy routes and congested areas (particularlynear District Centres).

When backed up by realistic timetables and adequate catch-uptime at termini, these measures should give Melbourne fast,reliable on-street public transport. Peak-period running timescan be cut by between 10% and 50%, and substantial gains canbe made at other times.

The recasting of outer suburban bus routes discussed below willalso cut travel times by reducing the number of indirect,circuitous routes.

Speed and Priority = Shorter travel timesAlthough less important than waiting time, fast in-vehicle travel isobviously important to provide competition with cars in a citywith freeways and high-standard arterial roads.

Improving Train Speeds

The heavy rail system must be the backbone of a publictransport network seeking to attract choice passengers. Only railcan compete for speed with cars over long distances, whichexplains why only cities with substantial rail systems have beenable to win passengers away from cars.

Melbourne’s trains are currently the slowest in Australia, withtimetables virtually unchanged since the days of the ‘red rattler’.Trains can be sped up simply by running at full speed, as can beseen from the superior performance of Perth’s narrow-gaugesuburban system. This measure alone (Recommendation 4) wouldcut running time by 10%, or up to 20% with express running.

City Melbourne PerthStation Highett FremantleDistance from city centre 18.8 km 18.7 kmIntervening stations 13 14Travel time to city (all stops) 31 min 28 minAverage speed 36 kph 40 kphStation Hoppers Crossing CurrambineDistance from city centre 29.8 km 29.2 kmIntervening stations 12 7Travel time to city (all stops) 39 min 27 minAverage speed 46 kph 65 kph

Station St. Albans WhitfordsDistance from city centre 19 km 19.5 kmIntervening stations 8 4Travel time to city (all stops) 25 min 18 minAverage speed 46 kph 65 kph

More extensive express running can further improve runningtimes on the longer lines. Currently, express trains almostdisappear outside peak hour. Pakenham trains, for example,make 28 stops in the trip from Flinders Street, providing nocompetition to a drive along the Monash and Princes Freeways.Express runs are needed all day on routes where trips are longor where road travel provides a fast alternative. However,express trains must always stop at District Centres and majorinterchange stations. (Recommendation 3)

It’s a household word:

Beschleunigungsmassnahmen!

Central Europe is home to the world’s most efficient andeffective tram systems. Their effectiveness has beenconsciously engineered, by systematically removing allimpediments to the free movement of trams. The practice isnow so common that there is even a word for it in German:Beschleunigungsmassnahmen.

This comprehensive approach to tram priority was pioneeredin Zurich between 1975 and 1985. Their speed-up programwas carried out on a route-by-route basis by a committeedrawn from the police, the tramway authority and localgovernment. Public transport patronage increased from 32%of travel to 42%.

Elements of Zurich’s tram priority scheme include:

•Traffic signals that respond to trams as they arrive,interrupting the ordinary cycle to allow trams straightthrough.

•On intersections where absolute tram priority is notfeasible, short signal cycles to prevent long delays totrams.

•Effective barriers on wide streets to separate tramsfrom cars.

•Traffic signal changes, partial road closures and othermeasures to prevent long queues of traffic forming onstreets too narrow for trams to be completely separatedfrom cars.

•Traffic islands, turn bans, hook turns and other measuresto prevent turning traffic obstructing trams.

Melbourne’s own tram network is large enough to rival thoseof Zurich or Vienna, but suffers from traffic-control measuresdesigned to favour cars. Far from allowing trams throughquickly, many traffic lights have special right-turn phases thatdelay trams carrying fifty or a hundred passengers, in orderthat one or two cars can turn right from an adjacent lane.Often these phases will trigger even when no cars arepresent, which suggests that even nonexistent motoristshave priority over tram passengers.

The Me lbou r ne t r am sys tem i s r i pe f o rBeschleunigungsmassnahmen. As in Zurich, real tram priorityin Melbourne will require the cooperation of bodies likeVicroads, the police and local councils. This is the basis forour Recommendation 5.

Coordination = Shorter transfer timesMelbourne has an extensive rail system capable of acting as ahigh-speed, high-frequency transport backbone. Nonetheless,only about one in ten Melburnians live within walking distance ofa railway station. If Melbourne is to achieve anywhere near‘world’s best’ public transport usage levels of 25 to 50 per centof all trips, the majority of public transport users will of necessitybe multi-modal, using buses and trams to access railwaystations as well as to travel locally.

In Melbourne, anything that detracts from multi-modal journeyswill detract from public transport use in general. And nothingdetracts from multi-modal journeys as much as the lack ofcoordination between modes. In many places the system isalmost comically dysfunctional: buses are scheduled to arrive atstations two minutes after the train leaves; trains running every15 minutes are ‘met’ by buses running every 20 minutes; busoperators are penalised if they wait an extra few minutes for alate-running train. This is a legacy of a century of Balkanisedpublic transport operations, and it all adds unnecessarily to thewaiting time passengers must endure at transfer points.

To rectify the situation requires both high frequencies, andplanned timetable coordination at designated interchange points.High frequencies for all services are necessary, because it isimpossible to coordinate services at all points of the network.Many bus routes in Melbourne cross three or more train lines, andcannot be made to coordinate with them all. High frequencies(Recommendation 1) ensure that even in the absence ofcoordination one never has to wait too long for a connection.

Planned coordination is necessary on local routes, whose mainpurpose is to feed a particular railway station. This is simple inprinciple, but is thwarted in practice by bureaucratic inertia andby the institutional chaos that is privatised public transport inVictoria. Our proposed Transport Authority (Recommendation 9)would have a mandate to coordinate timetables whereverpossible, right across the system.

The bus interchange at Boronia station is conveniently located at the stationentrance (the bus bays are behind the fence on the top right). Boronia is asuccessful example where a level crossing was removed by lowering the railway,and the opportunity taken to create a multimodal interchange.

bicycles to reach the station. In manycases the bike-rail combination canprovide a high level of convenience forthose who choose this option. Traditionally,Melbourne cyclists have been able to carrybicycles free on off-peak train services; thisshould be extended to ‘counter-flow’services in the peaks, where a concessionfare is currently required even though trainsare no more crowded than in off-peaktimes. Additionally, all stations shouldprovide thief-proof bicycle storagefacilities, supervised by station staff.Improved facilities for cyclists can boostpatronage a great deal by making publictransport more readily available to agrowing cyclist population.

There will nonetheless always be a minoritywho prefer not to avail themselves of thealternatives and will drive a car to thestation regardless. Just as in Toronto,provision should be made for park-and-ride as a secondary access mode forthose passengers who so choose.Existing car parking capacity should beconsolidated into fewer, larger car parks ata limited number of stations, principallythose located outside existing DistrictCentres and having good road access andavailable real estate. The overall number ofcar spaces should not increase above itspresent ample level, and may even bereduced to a level more like Toronto’s.

How To Make Feeder Services WorkIn Toronto’s case, there are a number offactors making feeder buses attractive:

•Buses and trains operate at highfrequencies (typically every 10 minutesor better), so one is never stranded ata railway station for long.

•Multimodal ticketing ensures there isno financial penalty for a bus/trainjourney relative to a train-only journey.

•Transfers are made as physicallyconvenient as possible. Buses pullup inside the station, within the paidarea so that unnecessary ticketchecks are avoided.

A policy of comprehensive feeder buseswith convenient bus-train transfers(Recommendation 6) generates huge extrapatronage (and revenue) for both trainsand buses. In Toronto, 50 per cent of buspassengers are transferring to or fromtrains. In Melbourne, the figure is just 10per cent. For this reason alone, it is suicidalfor transport operators to discouragetransfers to other services on the groundsthat it’s ‘feeding the competition’. All thisdoes is feed passengers to the realcompetitor, private cars.

In many European and Japanese cities, asubstantial proportion of rail patrons use

The key to having an intensively-used railsystem (unlike in Melbourne) is to attractpeople who live beyond walkingdistance from railway stations. How arethese people to access the rail system ifnot by walking?

Park-and-ride is the option that comesmost readily to bureaucrats and privaterail operators. So we are told that the keyto increasing rail patronage is buildingmore car parking at stations. Proponentspoint to the large multi-level commutercar parks in cities like Toronto, citingthem as the reason for the success ofthese cities’ rail systems.

There are serious problems with thisview, however.

•Consider a suburban station in Toronto:Finch Station at the terminus of theYonge Street subway. This station hasa 3,000 space car park, which is verylarge by car park standards. Yet FinchStation attracts 75,000 passengers aday; only 5 per cent of thesepassengers use the car park.

•Toronto’s relatively small rail systemcarries over three times as manypassengers as Melbourne’s. YetMelbourne’s rail system has over twiceas many car parking spaces in totalthan Toronto’s. (See chart.)

Judging by the figures, it is virtuallyimpossible to provide enough parkingspaces to make an intensively-used‘drive-in’ rail service feasible. Even ifMelbourne were to double the carparking capacity at all of its stations, bybuilding the equivalent of eight 3,000-space multi-storey car parks, this wouldyield at most a 20% increase in railpatronage. People living within walkingdistance would still form the majority ofrail passengers.

Park-and-ride has other inherentdisadvantages, the main one being thatthe car parks occupy valuable real estatenear stations that can be used moreproductively for retail hubs and othercommercial developments. It also doesn’thelp the many people without cars.

The key to the success of Toronto’s railsystem is the 76% of its passengers whoaccess it by feeder bus or tram. This fliesin the face of bureaucrats who insist thatfeeder services are useless becausepassengers find transfers tooinconvenient. The behaviour of realpassengers in cities with decent publictransport systems proves otherwise.

Why Park and Ride Doesn’t Work

Service Coverage: Convertingthe ‘Have-Nots’Sue and her family live in Rowville. Theyare typical ‘Aussie battlers’, living on themedian household income of $35,000 ayear after tax. The family owns three cars:one for Sue, one for her husband Jim,and one for their eldest son Nick. Thecars between them cost $7,000 a year inpetrol, maintenance and loan payments,or one-fifth of the household budget. Thefamily has never been on an overseasholiday, and must go without many ‘littleluxuries’ to make ends meet. They cannotdo without their three cars: the onlyalternative is a bus that operates between9am and 5pm on weekdays and at noother times. The two-hourly busfrequency makes it impossible for Sue todrop children off at school, work at herpart-time job, go to the supermarket, visitfriends and do the school pick-up all inone day, a routine which is perfectlysimple by car. Sue secretly envies herwealthier friend Jan in Balwyn, who isable to do all these things with the help ofan 8-minute tram service.

Present-day Melbourne is a city of ‘haves’and ‘have-nots’ where public transport isconcerned. The ‘haves’ are those livingwithin walking distance of a tram line orrailway station: the ‘have-nots’ areeveryone else.

The ‘haves’ have public transport that isgood by Melbourne standards, withtrams every 6 to 15 minutes and trainsevery 15 to 20 minutes during the day,with less frequent services in the eveningsuntil about 11:30pm, seven days a week.

The ‘have-nots’ have only the suburbanbus services, which are of a standardfound more commonly in third-worldcountries than in ‘world cities’. Buses run

up to two hours apart (30 to60 minutes being typical), andhave very limited hours ofoperation. Many cease wellbefore 6pm, making themuseless even for peak-hourcommuters. Buses that run atall in the evenings or onweekends are a relativeluxury: only one-quarter ofMelbourne’s bus routes runon Sundays. Vast swathes ofold and new suburbs have nopublic transport at all.

The ‘have-nots’ representtwo-thirds of Melbourne’spopulation.

Any plan for improving publictransport must devoteattention to its coverage, bothin space and in time. Publictransport must allow peopleto travel where and when theywant to. People in thesuburbs do not go to bed at5:30pm, and neither shouldthe transport services. And acomprehensive network mustmake public transportaccessible to everyone.

Spatial coverageMelbourne has the goodfortune to possess one of thelargest rail and tram systems in theworld. With just one or two exceptions,most areas of the city are within a fewkilometres of the system, and few majorextensions are required. The focusshould be on smaller alterations toimprove connections between modesand access to activity centres.

Our emphasis on fine-tuning existinginfrastructure is in keeping with travelstatistics presented in policy documentsof successive State Governments. Muchas the road lobby has tried todemonstrate the need for a metropolitanring road, Census figures show thattransport in Melbourne still follows apredominantly radial pattern. Most tripsthat are not confined to one’s local areaare either to or towards the city centre;thus, they are mostly well catered for bythe existing radial network.

For example, the map above comes fromthe government’s Scoresby Corridorstudy,30 and demonstrates the radialfocus for travel in the outer easternsuburbs. (Note the very thin lineconnecting the Upper Scoresby andLower Scoresby regions.)

Of the trips that are not radial, by far themajority are focussed on isolated ‘travelgenerators’ scattered through thesuburbs. Some of these places, such asCamberwell and Box Hill, are easilyaccessible by public transport; others,such as Monash University or MelbourneAirport, are not. This suggests that publictransport could meet a large proportion ofpeople’s travel needs if a few ‘missinglinks’ were to be provided and integratedinto the existing network. In many cases,easements are available to provide thesemissing links.

Public Transport Availability on Sundays in the Cities of Knox, Monash and Greater Dandenong

The VATS Map: Travel in Melbourne is Radially Focussed

possible to have a single bus routeservice all possible journeys. Torontomakes extensive use of bus-to-bustransfers to link a wider range oflocations. Bus stops at major roadintersections are located close to eachother to make such transfers easier, andbuses will often stop on both sides ofwide intersections so transferringpassengers do not have to cross theroad. High frequencies (akin to tramshere) ensure that one doesn’t have towait long for the next bus.

The simplified, coordinated bus networkshould extend into all built-up areaso f Melbourne. In new residentialsubdivisions, bus services should beprovided before residents move in, not ayear later when car use has alreadybecome entrenched. The network shouldbe operated with state-of-the-art low-floor buses, supplemented with smallermidi-buses on lower-capacity localroutes. Cleaner fuels such as natural gasor ethanol should be considered assubstitutes for diesel.

parts of Melbourne. However, the tramterminus (in the middle of WhitehorseRoad) is located too far from the station,making interchange from train to trammore difficult. The tram needs to beextended 100 metres further into thetransport interchange proper.

‘Wandering Minstrel Bus Lines’Unlike the train and tram networks,Melbourne’s bus network is utterlydysfunctional. The Melbourne bus mapdepicts a tangled web of routes thatmeander through back streets, undertaketortuous diversions and still manage toleave entire residential areas unserviced.The original intent may have been to havea single bus route link all possible originsand destinations within an entire suburb,but poor bus patronage proves that this ispoor policy. Meandering routes make bustravel little faster than walking, reducerevenue collection per hour of busrunning time, do not permit frequentservice, and make the route structuredifficult for passengers to understand.

People are attracted tobus routes when theyare direct and simpleto unde rs tand . Acomparison of a typicalMelbourne bus route withan equivalent route inToronto shows what mustbe done (see figure).

As in Toronto, Melbo-urne’s road network isorganised on a grid layoutwhich can form an easy-to-understand basis forits bus routes. The keyroutes should, like trams,adhere to the arterial roadgrid and coordinate withtrains at stations wherethe railways intersect thegrid (Recommendation 6).In this way they cancombine the vital feederfunction with effectivec r o s s - s u b u r b a ntransport. The very fewMelbourne bus routesthat already approximatethis model (such as the630 along North Roadand the 703 alongBlackburn Road) area lso the routes thata t t r a c t r e a s o n a b l epatronage—if still lowby world standards.

O f c o u r s e , m a n ysuburban journeys are notconveniently aligned withthe arterial road grid.Because of the diversityo f t r i p o r i g i ns anddestinations, it is not

TrainsWhile Melbourne’s suburban rail networkis comprehensive, it is not without seriousgaps. There are two regions in particular(Doncaster / Templestowe, and southKnox) that now support large populationsdespite being remote from the railnetwork. The lack of rail lines in theseregions is due to historical accident andhas nothing to do with the needs ofresidents. We propose new rail lines(Projects 1 and 2) as the high-capacity‘backbones’ necessary to serve theseregions. Compared with equivalent roadprojects, these new lines are a bargain.

Ideally, all of Melbourne’s key travelgenerators would be located close to therail network; no other mode will providecapacity sufficient to serve a significantproportion of trips by public transport.Fortunately, due to Melbourne’s history ofrail-centred development most of these‘hot spots’ are close to railway stations.Among the rest, the most significant areDoncaster Shoppingtown, MonashUniversity and Melbourne Airport. Thefirst two are located on the proposed raillines to Doncaster and Rowville; the thirdis a separate project (Project 3).

In several places minor extensions, newtracks and stations are required onexisting lines to cater for residential growthon Melbourne’s urban fringe (Project 4).

TramsMelbourne’s iconic tram network functionswell and is popular with travellers. However,it also suffers from some minordeficiencies, in particular the historicallegacy of lines that terminate half a milefrom train stations and major tripgenerators. Short, inexpensive extensionsof these lines (Project 5) would render thenetwork much more effective as a feeder tothe rail backbone. Other short extensionswould cater for cross-suburban journeys,such as Caulfield to Camberwell.

Trams have a carrying capacityintermediate between heavy rail andbuses, and can therefore serve as accessmodes to ‘hot spots’ where rail extensionsare difficult or not otherwise warranted.The most desirable extensions of this typeare from East Burwood to Knox City, andfrom East Malvern to Chadstoneshopping centre. Project 5 gives a full listof desirable tram extensions.

The $22 million extension of the MontAlbert tram line to the Box Hill DistrictCentre is a good example of a useful (ifextravagantly executed) tram extension.For the first time, residents of suburbssuch as Balwyn and Mont Albert Northhave convenient public transport accessnot only to the Box Hill shops, but also toeastern suburban train services.Likewise, these suburbs are now moreaccessible by public transport from other

Toronto’s successful bus routes are direct and easy tounderstand—unlike Melbourne’s.

This 12-kilometre train extension fromHuntingdale station to Stud Parkshopping centre in Rowville has atwofold aim: to provide a new high-speed backbone for the publictransport ‘black hole’ of Wheelers Hilland south Knox; and to boost publictransport capacity to such majordestinations as Monash University,Stud Park, the Wellington BusinessPark, and whatever large developmentis set to replace Waverley Park.

This proposal dates back to the 1969Transportation Plan, when it wasproposed to run all the way to FerntreeGully. Following the usual pattern, therailway was not built while theaccompanying Mulgrave Freeway was.We propose that the railway run in acutting in the Wellington Road median,with underpasses at road intersectionsas far as Stud Road; a shortunderground deviation of some 500mwould lead to the terminus inside oradjacent to Stud Park.

Stations would be provided at keyinterchange points and trip generators,at a spacing of roughly 2 kilometres.Trains would run from Rowville direct tot h e C i t y e v e r y 1 0 m i n u t e s ,with an express running patterncomplementary to those on thePakenham and Cranbourne lines. Forexample, one possible pattern might be

•Rowville > all stations to Oakleigh >Caulfield > all stations to City

•Pakenham > all stations to Dandenong> Springvale > Clayton > Oakleigh >all stations to Malvern > South Yarra >Richmond > City

•Cranbourne > all stations to Oakleigh> Caulfield > Malvern > South Yarra >Richmond > City

Because these three routes betweenthem cover all stations, these expresspatterns could apply throughout the day,not just in peak hours.

‘Light Rail’ Not An Option

In an attempt to muster political supportfor the Scoresby Freeway, the BracksGovernment in 2001 proposed a‘package’ of public transport in the OuterEast region that provides about 5 percent of what is needed. Instead of a trainline capable of carrying large numbers ofpeople to and from Monash, WheelersHill, Mulgrave and Rowville, the roadlobby bureaucrats put forward a two-kilometre tram line (‘light railway’) capableof carrying a few hundred universitystudents from Huntingdale to Monash.

While this is slightly better than nothing, itwould have few advantages over theexisting route 630 bus. The concept of abus or tram route feeding into a railwaystation is fine for residential suburbs, but

will not do for a major trip generatorsuch as a university with a population of20,000. Even if just 10 per cent of theMonash population were persuaded touse public transport, and half of theseaccessed the university from points duewest, this would still require 1,000people per day to change to a tram justto travel the last two kilometres toMonash. If they all started at 9am andfinished at 5pm it would require aconvoy of 10 trams nose-to-tail. Butour target for public transport use atMonash should be much greater thanthis. And of course, a tram terminatingat Monash would do nothing for thepublic transport black hole further east.

Last but not least is the question of‘bang for our buck’. Even a surface tramroute is likely to cost in excess of $20million, given that it will require newdepots and rolling stock. The heavy railextension from Huntingdale to Rowvillewas costed by government consultantsin 1996 at $100 million—still only one-tenth the cost of the ScoresbyFreeway—and could use existing rollingstock (there are many surplus trains nowin storage). We have added 20 per centto the cost to allow for inflation. Even so,a tram to Monash would incur nearly 20per cent of the cost of a train to Rowvillefor a tiny fraction of the benefit.

Project 1. Rowville train lineIndicative cost $120 million plus $1 million per year

latter is expected to cost $600 million(twice as much as the railway) and isunlikely to do much for inner-city trafficcongestion as most Eastern Freewaytraffic is headed for the city centre. Ourproposed rail line would providewelcome relief for Doncaster commuterswho find themselves in longer and longertraffic jams on the Eastern Freewayfollowing its progressive extension fromDoncaster to Ringwood.

three decades. Our updated proposal isfor a railway to branch off the existing linenorth of Victoria Park station, run along theEastern Freeway median as far as Bulleen(which was made especially wide so as toaccommodate a railway), then rununderground to Doncaster Shoppingtownand on to East Doncaster. The total lengthof tunnel would be approximately 5km.

This train line proposal is an alternative tothe inward extension of the EasternFreeway through Fitzroy and Carlton. The

The orchards of Doncaster andTemplestowe have since the 1960sgiven way to contiguous suburbandevelopment in the broad ‘green wedge’between the Eltham and Ringwood trainlines. The filling of the corresponding gapin the rail network is long overdue.

The East Doncaster railway traces itsancestry back to 1929, and like theRowville line was one of the key railproposals in the 1969 transport plandestined to gather dust over the next

suburban bus network, for cases whereit is inconvenient to travel via the CBD.High-frequency buses should beprovided from the Airport following themain road grid to suburbs in alldirections.

is nothing but an extension to an existingservice, it raises none of the concernsabout high-speed trains in residentialareas expressed by residents along theBroadmeadows line.

There is also a need for the airport to beintegrated into a comprehensive cross-

The most convenient and economicalsolution for public transport access toMelbourne Airport is an extension of theregular suburban train service toBroadmeadows. The extension would bein a cutting along an existing easementunder the flight path, to a station in thebasement of the terminal building. Serviceswould operate with standard suburbanfrequencies and hours of operation (withthe last departure scheduled after thearrival of the latest flight), with the Airportstation in Met Zone 3.

This fairly modest airport link proposalshares none of the disadvantages thathave led to the failure of airport lines inSydney and Brisbane, and led theVictorian government to (quite rightly)scrap a proposal for a rail link modelledon these two. The reason for the failure ofthese systems is an over-reliance onexpensive technology to provide a luxuryservice for a select few, rather than aconventional service for the averagetraveller. Our proposal calls for noadditional dedicated tracks, specialrolling stock, tunnels throughswampland, or exorbitant fares. And as it

Project 2. East Doncaster train line

Project 3. Airport train extensionIndicative cost $50 million plus $1 million per year

The history of Melbourne shows that the undesirableconsequences of ‘urban sprawl’ can be mitigated (if notexactly avoided) when suburban development occurs in aplanned manner, on a ‘corridors-and-wedges’ or similarscheme that preserves open space, and includes publictransport services from the very beginning so as not toentrench suburban car dependence.

There are a number of places where suburban developmenthas outrun, or threatens to outrun, the suburban train networkby short distances. Other fringe suburbs have rail servicesalready, but these services are hampered by inadequate track

and station infrastructure. In all these areas, small networkextensions, electrifications and other improvements wouldhave disproportionate benefits.

The planned extension from Epping to South Morang will helpboost public transport access to new subdivisions in Mill Parkand South Morang. Further extensions along the route of theformer Whittlesea railway should occur in line with thedevelopment of the Plenty Valley.

As in all parts of Melbourne, bus networks in the vicinity of newrailway stations should be reorganised to feed into thesestations and coordinate with trains.

Project Estimated costContinue electrification from Sydenham to Sunbury $45 millionElectrify to Craigieburn: stations at Coolaroo, Roxburgh Park, Patullos $33 millionExtend Epping line to South Morang: stations at Pindari, Mill Park $30 millionDuplicate single-track sections on Epping line $10 millionDuplicate and electrify Sunshine to Melton $125 millionNew station and bus interchange at Newport West $1 millionReconfigure stations on Alamein line* $1 millionDuplicate single-track sections on Hurstbridge line $60 millionNew station at Eltham North (Allendale Road) $0.5 millionDuplicate Mooroolbark to Lilydale $15 millionNew station at Cave Hill (Mooroolbark Road) $0.5 millionDuplicate Upper Ferntree Gully to Belgrave $15 millionReroute Pakenham line through Fountain Gate Shop Ctr $15 millionDuplicate Dandenong to Cranbourne $40 millionNew station and bus interchange at Hampton Park $1 millionNew station and bus interchange at Southland Shop Ctr $1 millionDuplicate and electrify Frankston to Leawarra (Monash University) $10 millionDuplicate and electrify Leawarra to Mornington $85 million

Project 4. Other train improvements:Anticipating the GrowthIndicative cost $488 million plus $2 million per year, over 18 subprojects

Project Estimated costExtend 75 East Burwood to Knox City $40 millionExtend 57 West Maribyrnong to East Keilor $30 millionExtend 48 North Balwyn to Doncaster Shoppingtown $20 millionExtend 109 Box Hill to Box Hill RS $0.8 millionExtend 8 Toorak to Hartwell $25 million(serving two rail lines and Coles Myer headquarters)

Extend 69 Kew Cotham Rd to Kew Junction $0.2 millionExtend 72 Camberwell to North Kew (Yarra Flats RS) $18 millionFurther extension to Ivanhoe RS (via Lwr H’berg Rd) $20 million

Extend Burke Road track south to Caulfield RS $18 millionExtend 3 East Malvern to East Malvern RS $5 millionFurther extension to Chadstone shopping centre $12 million

Extend 67 Carnegie to Carnegie RS $5 millionExtend 6 Glen Iris to Ashburton RS $20 millionRelocate Melbourne University shunting area north of Elgin St $1 million

Doncaster railway, but have clear merits intheir own right.

The southern extension of the Burke Roadtramway would make possible a new tramroute running along the length of BurkeRoad from Kew in the north to Caulfield inthe south. This would provide a vital cross-suburban link from the Frankston andDandenong train lines to places likeCamberwell, and would also improve

The aim of this programme is to makethe tram network more functional as partof a seamless, integrated publictransport network, by improving accessbetween tram termini, railway stationsand major trip generators, and by closingsome cross-suburban gaps.

The proposed extensions to DoncasterShoppingtown and to North Kew wouldboth coordinate with the proposed East

Temporal coverageThe most comprehensive public transportnetwork in the world is of no use if itleaves people stranded in the evenings oron weekends. Twenty-first centurylifestyles are not restricted to the hours of8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. That erawhen Melburnians stayed homeevery night, when Melbourne stoppedcompletely on Sundays and became acity fit for making a film about the end ofthe world, is well behind us and unlikely toreturn. Melbourne is a 24-hour, 7-day cityand needs a 24-hour, 7-day service.

A good start would be having busesadhere to the same hours of operation astrams. Currently even some inner-citybuses cease operating at 6pm while thetram routes they intersect operate untilafter midnight.

Night services, too, are vital to high-quality public transport. All successfulpublic transport systems provide round-the-clock services. New York andChicago run trains 24 hours a day, whileLondon and Sydney use buses to provideafter-midnight services 7 days a week.Perth’s trains run until 2 or 3am on Friday

and Saturday nights, and in Brisbanebuses run until around 1am seven days aweek. Toronto’s trains, trams and busesoperate at normal frequencies until around1:45 am, when a more limited network of22 tram and bus routes takes over,operating every 8 to 30 minutes until dawn.

Melbourne should be no different. TheNightrider bus service was a positive stepwhen it was introduced in 1993 (followinga suggestion by the PTUA) but muchmore is needed. All but the quieterMelbourne train, tram and bus servicesshould operate—at normal frequencies—until around 2am, with a more limited half-hourly tram and bus network continuinguntil 5am (Recommendation 2). Routesserving major nightlife centres such as StKilda, Fitzroy and Southbank would runmore frequently. This will ensure thatpublic transport is an option for late-nighttravellers and entertainment seekers.

Late in 1997 the PTC took a small step inthe right direction by introducing an all-night, 20-minute tram service that ranaround the main nightlife centres,providing a connection to the Nightrider

buses at Flinders Street. However, theservice was badly publicised and waswithdrawn the following April. Clearlymore is required, when it is possible forpeople even in the inner suburbs to be leftstranded as early as 11:30pm with nopublic transport.

Project 5. Tram gap-filling programmeIndicative cost $215 million plus $2 million per year, over 14 subprojects

access to Monash University’s Caulfieldcampus (and indirectly the Claytoncampus as well). With the new BurkeRoad route in place, the oddly-routed 72could be terminated near Gardinerstation (or extended along Malvern Roadto Glen Iris), with easy interchange toBurke Road trams and trains on the GlenWaverley line.

Ms Downing says she drives becauseit’s the more convenient option. If shetravelled by public transport she wouldhave to buy a ticket for zones one, twoand three, which would cost $11 a day.She doesn’t feel safe on publictransport after hours and sometimesshe does shift work.

—The Sunday Age, 7 April 2002

The privatisation of public transport inMelbourne does not appear to havechanged the entrenched captive-marketmentality of transport operators. Theattitude that services are operated fortheir own sake and not for the benefit ofpassengers is all too frequently displayedby Transport Ministers and privateoperators alike. The view seems to bethat passengers should conform to therequirements of operators, not thatoperators should serve passengers. Thisattitude may work for banks, but not forbusinesses that rely on the goodwill oftheir customers for patronage.

Ticketing as if People MatteredApart from limited running times and poorservice frequencies, the ticketing systemis the most obviously dysfunctionalaspect of Melbourne’s public transport.Tram passengers, who were served byconductors as recently as 1997, mustnow buy tickets from oversized machinesthat only take coins. The machines atrailway stations, that take notes but willnot issue more than $10 in change, arefrequently vandalised or malfunctioning.Travellers frustrated by the ticketmachines are directed to distant retailoutlets that are closed mornings andevenings and do not sell the full range oftickets anyway. Passengers must

revalidate their tickets every time theyboard a tram, for no better reason thanthat it gives the bean counters someunreliable statistics to work with. And if aticket gets lost or damaged in themachine, the holder must negotiate aByzantine nightmare of forms and redtape before any refund is paid.

The legacy of this broken system, whichcost $400 million to implement, is a recordrate of fare evasion, estimated at 10% onthe system as a whole and up to 40% onthe tram system. Rather than acknowledgethe role of the despised ticketing system inthe high rate of fare evasion, thegovernment and operators prefer to blameit on some peculiar disease that afflictsMelbourne public transport users and no-one else. It doesn’t help that Onelink, theoperator of the ticketing system, has itsown contract with the government underwhich it has no obligation to fix theproblems. (A small step in the rightdirection was taken with the reintroductionof daily ticket sales on trams in 2002, butthe underlying problems remain.)

If a ticketing system is to be convenient topassengers and foil fare evasion, it mustmake it as easy as practicable to buy aticket, and as difficult as practicable toavoid buying one. The current system isthe precise opposite: it makes purchasingtickets difficult, and makes fare evasionsimple by comparison.

The government and operators havelearned the hard way that the only optionfor fighting fare evasion, especially ontrams, is with a visible staff presence. Notso long ago, this presence on trams wasfurnished by conductors, who not only

made sure everyone had a ticket but alsoassisted with directions, helpedpassengers with mobility problems orwith prams, and maintained a safe,secure travelling environment.

Now, the only staff encountered by trampassengers are poorly-trained ticketinspectors, who travel the system inpacks and have no duties beyondchasing down fare evaders. Similarly,ticket sellers and other railway staff havebeen replaced by security guards with noresponsibility to assist passengers. Thenumber of hired thugs required under the‘no-staff’ policy is rapidly approaching thenumber of (friendly) conductors andstation staff that used to exist.

Barring the commercial failure of Onelink,it is unlikely we will see the wholesaleremoval of the Metcard machines fromMelbourne’s trains, trams and buses—atl eas t be fo re 2006 when the i rcur ren t contract expires. Given thisconsideration, fixing the Metcard systemwill require a two-pronged approach(Recommendation 7).

•On the one hand, the more ridiculousaspects of the automatic ticketingsystem must be remedied, byremoving the requirement to revalidatean already valid ticket.

•On the other hand, a staff presencemust be reestablished alongside theticket machines. This is the norm inother cities around the world withautomated ticketing—including Sydney,London, Hong Kong, and Brussels(which uses almost identical machines).

There is a clear need, and overwhelmingpublic support, for the return ofconductors on trams. Together withservice staff at stations, they wouldperform their traditional functions and helpissue a range of Metcard tickets. Stationstaff would help safeguard revenue bymonitoring ticket barriers, which are opento abuse when no staff are present.

A System Serving Passengers, Not Vice Versa

of money making vehicles luxurious, thisis not likely to increase patronage.” (The‘branding’ of public transport is a distinctissue, and colour schemes can beimportant in this regard.)

The new rolling stock is likely to have thegreatest effect on passenger comfort if itis used, in conjunction with the 40 surplustrains and the 100 fully operational W-class trams currently sitting in mothballs,to increase service frequency and reduceovercrowding. Under present conditions,potential passengers are often deterredby uncomfortably overcrowded vehicles.The major cause is not an overall lack ofcapacity (since many services run halfempty even in peak hour), but unreliabilityand inappropriate timetabling. This is aparticular problem in the evenings, whenone can wait 20 minutes for a tram onlyto find it packed full as a sardine tin. Theobvious solution—to allow more trams torun in the evening instead of sitting idle atdepots—is overlooked by operatorswhose practices are frozen in the 1950s,and by bureaucrats who regard publictransport as a last-resort option for peak-hour commuters and school children.

Tram passengers also deserve better thanto be herded into crowded metal corrals,exposed to the elements and splashed bypassing cars. ‘Superstops’ are a mixedblessing, adding to passenger comfortand the visibility of tram stops, butdetracting from easy access by placing a50-metre solid wall between the tram stopand the adjacent footpath. The design ofsuperstops must be made morepermeable, with accessibility similar to theexisting tram safety zones.

In other tram cities, motorists are requiredto stop for trams even on the busiestroads. In German and Swiss cities,special traffic signals control road vehiclesat tram stops. Such signals are likely tohave a greater effect than hiddencameras in preventing motorists passingstationary trams.

Rail stations, as well as being safe andclean, should provide adequatepassenger service and facilities, includingcomfortable waiting rooms protected fromthe elements. No longer should a trainpassenger be unable to go to the toiletsimply because no-one is around to detervandals. Information about all local train,tram and bus services should be availableand the arrival of trains clearly announced.

Train ‘conductors’ should also bereintroduced, following V/Line’s successfulexample, to provide a safe travellingenvironment, prevent vandalism and foilfare evasion. As with tram conductors,there should be a clear understanding thatpassenger security and assistance are theirprimary roles, alongside fare collection.Along with other passenger contact staff,they should have the ability to summonpolice assistance when required.

Appropriate levels of staffing mean safevehicles, safe stations and honestcustomers, which safeguards revenue andattracts more people onto the system. Ofcourse, all staff who have contact with thepublic should be trained to treat eachpassenger as a valued customer ratherthan as a potential criminal.

The Public TransportUser ExperiencePassenger comfort is another issuewhere public transport can be seen asinferior to cars, to the extent of turningpassengers away. However, it’s importantnot to confuse comfort with aesthetics.Under the terms of the privatisationcontracts, the State government gave theprivate operators hundreds of millions ofdollars to purchase new rolling stock. Thenew trams and trains (imported fromoverseas) certainly look nice, but it ispossible that aesthetics has beenpursued to the detriment of other factorsthat might have a greater effect onpatronage. For example, the new YarraTrams have a sleek European finish, buthave no more seats than the A-classtrams they are replacing and fewer seatsthan the 1990s-vintage B-class.

Research on passenger comfort31 hasfound that the key issues forpassengers are:

1.Cleanliness and reasonable repair.Obvious vandalism makes peoplevery nervous, because it implies theyaren’t safe.

2 Getting a seat on the vehicle.

3.Heating and cooling, when appropriate.

According to the same research, nothingelse has a significant effect on patronagelevels. Colour schemes, shininess, age ofthe vehicle, and so on, all count forvirtually nothing. The conclusion is that“while some transit agencies spend a lot

Staff on the System meansSafety and Service

We considered automated ticketing, butdecided we’d still have to staff all ourstations if customers were to feel safe. Ifthe staff have to be there for safety, theymight as well sell tickets too.

—Juri Pill, Toronto Transit Commission

The best public transport service in theworld will be of no avail if people feelunsafe using it. Reports of assaults, darkand deserted stations and vandalisedbuildings and equipment have created acrisis of confidence in the safety of thesystem. Although the problems caneasily be solved, recent developments inpublic transport have served only tomake them worse.

Women in particular have abandonedpublic transport after dark, depriving thesystem of half its potential passengers.This contrasts with the well-used systemsin New York, Toronto and elsewhere,where single people of both sexes areregularly seen travelling on publictransport late in the evenings.

The Kennett and Bracks Governmentshave both paid lip service to ‘customer-friendly’ public transport. There has beenmuch rhetoric about customer service,‘Premium’ Stations, passenger charters,and increased patronage. In reality, thisrhetoric covered up a programme ofservice cuts that saw tram conductorssacked, station staff dwindle, publicassets sold to overseas operators, anongoing problem of personal safety, anda decline in Melbourne’s public transportmode share to its lowest level in history.

The only real answer to safety problems isadequate staffing, with well-trained,resourced and motivated personnel.‘Premium Stations’ that are staffed at nightare seldom vandalised and passengersfeel safe at them. But just as with networkcoverage, there should be no haves andhave-nots on public transport. Everystation should be a Premium Station,meaning it should be staffed from first tolast train and staff must be able to observeplatforms and waiting areas(Recommendation 7 and Project 6).

We expect, therefore, that the net costof restaffing the system would be lessthan $25 million a year. This is aconservative figure and is likely tooverestimate the true cost. (The cost oftram conductors was $40 million a yearin the mid-1990s.)

The return of conductors and stationstaff is a thoroughly viable proposition. Ifit were to be funded through a fareincrease, the increase would be less thanthe 10% GST that now applies to publictransport tickets. But it does not need tobe funded through increased fares: costsavings and cuts are never passed on inthe form of reduced fares, after all. Wedon’t increase the Medicare levy everytime we fund a new initiative in publichealth, and this should be the same.

•Fare evasion is said to cost theoperators $50 million a year.Realistically we can expect that thesestaff would cut fare evasion by 80% bymaking it difficult to fare evade, easy tobuy a ticket, and defusing the currentinformal campaign of civil disobedience.That’s $40 million a year saved.

•With conductors on trams and staff atstations, the roving ticket inspectorswould become largely redundant.There are more than 100 of these ontrams alone. Reemploying three-quarters of these as tram conductorsmeans $7 million less need be spent oninspectors each year.

•Inc reased pa t ronage , th roughimprovements in actual and perceivedsafety, cleanliness, slightly faster trams,fewer unpleasant incidents and generalcommercial goodwill, will boostrevenue by an amount that is difficult toquantify.

•Costs to the operators and lawenforcement authorities would bereduced through fewer offences,fewer court appearances, lessvandalism, and lower maintenancecosts for ticket machines.

“It would take the price of a daily zoneone ticket from $5.10 to $7 and we’renot prepared to do that.”—Transport Minister Peter Batchelor, onreintroducing tram conductors and station staff, 6March 2002

A provocative claim indeed! Publictransport users may recall that five yearsago, when all trams had conductors, thecost of a daily zone one ticket was justover $4.00. That was before thegovernment had signed off on the $400million contract to replace conductorswith ticket machines. Just how muchwould it cost to reintroduce conductorsand station staff?

Approximately 1,400 passenger-servicestaff would be required to staff our 500trams and 210 stations. Of these 200 arealready budgeted for (100 conductors and100 station staff, currently used as ticketinspectors and security guards). Thisleaves 1,200 to be funded from additionalrevenue. Allowing $60,000 per employeefor salary and on-costs gives a total cost of$72 million per year to restaff the system.

There are, however, a number of factorsthat would cause the net cost to bemuch less than $72 million:

Fares FairThe last significant issue on which publictransport competes with the car is cost.The mechanics of issuing physical ticketshave been dealt with above, but thequestion of exactly how we shouldcharge for public transport servicesremains to be considered.

The key principle for a public transportfare system is that fares should be set tocompete with equivalent car journeys,and should not encourage people todesert the system for what are seen ascheaper alternatives.

Because only a minority of people cansatisfy their transport needs with only onemode of transport, fares need to remainmultimodal. The practice of privateoperators introducing their own single-mode tickets is counterproductive (andunpopular with passengers) and shouldcease. Similarly, services such as Skybusand Nightrider which currently charge theirown separate fares should be broughtwithin the multimodal fare system.

Motorists enjoy many ‘economies ofscale’ from driving more often, due to theway vehicle-related taxes are structured.Whether or not this is remedied throughtax reform (Project 10), the realeconomies of scale in public transport

should be reflected in the fare structure.The use of periodical tickets should beencouraged and carry significantdiscounts. These should be flexible, withthree-monthly, six-monthly and V/Line-style date-to-date tickets in addition tothe current weekly, monthly and yearlytickets. Aside from being convenient topassengers, periodical tickets benefitoperators by providing revenue securityand reducing the overhead of ticket sales.Of course, two-hour and daily ticketsmust continue to be easily available atreasonable rates to casual users, who aretomorrow’s frequent users.

Car owners can make many extra trips intheir car for very little additional cost.Similarly, the ‘marginal cost’ of publictransport—the cost of making one extratrip—should be kept as low as possible,ideally zero. This is another reason toencourage use of periodical tickets as analternative to ‘multi-trip’ tickets such asthe 10 x 2-hour ticket, which imposes thesame cost for each additional trip.

Because most cars used by commuterson weekdays become family cars onweekends, a full-fare periodical ticketshould once again allow free (or at leastconcessional) travel in all zones for a

family of four on weekends and publicholidays, as it did prior to 1993.

Commuters from regional cities such asGeelong or Warragul often work in thesuburbs rather than the city centre, anddriving to and parking in these suburbs isoften easier than in the City. Thus, V/Linetickets should also entitle passengers touse all services in the same zone as theirdestination on the day of travel (forexample Zone 1 for Spencer Street, orZone 3 for Dandenong).

Melbourne’s current three-zone system isa reasonable compromise betweenrecovering the cost of long journeys,permitting inexpensive travel to keydestinations, and keeping fare calculationreasonably simple. While it is not perfect,we do not propose any major changes asthese would only make the system moreconfusing. Minor changes that are likelyto be beneficial include:

•fine-tuning zone boundaries, forexample to bring Box Hill within Zone 1and Ringwood within Zone 2; and

•establishing a new inner-city zone,with equal fares for all four zones, andthe abolition of the confusing ‘ShortTrip’ ticket.

Project 6. Re-staffing the system

Location Population density(persons / sq km)

Sweden 19

Victoria (settled parts*) 42

Ireland 53

Spain 78

Austria 80

France 107

Switzerland 120

Germany 229

United Kingdom 242* ‘settled parts’ means all Victoria except the

Mallee and High Country.

The transport system we envisage forVictoria is a comprehensive train andbus network based on the ‘PulseNetwork’ model used successfully inSwitzerland, Austria and Sweden. Thebasic principles are familiar from ourrecommendations for Melbourne:

1. HHoouurrss ooff ooppeerraattiioonn of all servicesmust reflect the times when peoplewant to travel. Services must runseven days a week from earlymorning, with final departures for keyservices at midnight.

2. SSeerrvviiccee ffrreeqquueennccyy must reflect thedemand for travel, as measured bynumber of trips using all modes(including cars). No service will runless than every two hours during itshours of operation, except those inremote rural areas.

3. Major regional cities must be linked toMelbourne by high-quality rraaiillsseerrvviicceess competitive in speed andconvenience with private car travel.These rail services will provide thebackbone for the country transportnetwork (Project 7).

4. BBuuss sseerrvviicceess should link regionalcentres by direct and easy-to-understand routes wherever possible,following the ‘desire lines’ of countrytravellers, and act as feeders to therail system (Project 8).

to the suburbs of Melbourne. Transportlinks are central to this policy, and thecentrepiece in the eyes of the BracksGovernment has always been ‘fast trains’linking Melbourne with Geelong, Ballarat,Bendigo and Traralgon.

While the broad initiative is to beapplauded, and the commitment of $550million in public funding magnificent, thedevil is in the detail. The exclusive focuson four regional cities seems likely tocreate a new set of public transport‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Though this isdoubtless not the government’s intention,there is a real danger of replicating thesituation in France, where regional citiessuch as Lyon and Marseilles havebenefited greatly from TGV (train à grandvitesse) links to Paris, but at the expenseof the smaller towns and villages inbetween, which now have poorer levelsof service than previously.

When people lament the decline ofcountry life in Victoria and elsewhere, it isgenerally these smaller towns they havein mind, not the large urban centres thathave more in common with Melbournethan with their rural hinterland. Evensmaller regional cities stand to lose outfrom the proposals; Victoria has no lessthan 23 cities with populations in excessof 10,000 people, some of which (likeCastlemaine) could be bypassed by thefast trains under current plans.

It is often claimed that Australia’s statusas the world’s most sparsely populatedcontinent means that the trend towardurbanisation is inevitable, and theprovision of public transport in rural areasunviable. But our present subject is notthe trackless deserts that span much ofthe continent; it is the bottom south-eastcorner which is comparable with parts ofEurope in its population density. The stateof Victoria may be even more denselypopulated than some Europeancountries; Sweden is three times the sizeof Victoria, but has only twice thepopulation. Sweden does not use its lowpopulation density as an excuse to denytransport services to its rural citizens.

George lives in Highton, a suburb ofGeelong, and commutes to Melbourneonce a week. He tried doing the trip onceby public transport, just for laughs. Thebus arrived 10 minutes late andmeandered through the back streets ofBelmont on the way to Geelong towncentre. George then found he had to walkfrom the centre of Geelong to the station,as the bus didn’t go there. The train he’dhad in mind to catch had already left;fortunately he’d left an extra hour up hissleeve so he could catch the next one.Just outside Newport, the train got stuckbehind an all-stations suburban train andarrived at Spencer Street 10 minutes late.George was glad that his V/Line ticketallowed him to use the City Loop, but hethen found he had to buy a Zone 1Metcard in order to get the tram to hisfinal destination in St Kilda Road. Thetotal round trip cost George $27.60:$1.55 each way for the bus, $19.40return for the train, and $5.10 for a dailyMetcard. His usual journey by car costshim $10 for petrol—about one-third asmuch. Parking is provided for free by hisemployer, who gets a tax deduction.

John and Jane live in Melbourne, andhave been invited by friends to spend theweekend in Peterborough, on the GreatOcean Road near Warrnambool. Theytake the car; no other option occurs tothem. Indeed, the only public transport toPeterborough of any description is asingle bus every Friday, despite the townbeing an important tourist destinationwith a sizeable permanent population.The nearest everyday public transport isthe train to Terang, from which they’dhave to hire a car or beg their friends fora lift over the remaining 40 kilometres.

The same principles that apply to publictransport in metropolitan Melbourneapply also to transport servicesthroughout country Victoria. For the firsttime in decades, there is both communityand high-level political support forimproved public transport in the country.The State Government has a policy ofdecentralisation, aimed at increasing theimportance of regional cities relative toMelbourne and stemming the exodus ofpopulation from regional and rural Victoria

Reconnecting Victoria

5. NNeettwwoorrkk ccoovveerraaggee must ensure that allbut the smallest towns are served by abus route or railway station. No part ofVictoria deserves to be isolated. Thevitality of the Victorian countryside inthe decades after Federation was notunrelated to the fact that every singletown had a train service.

6. Railway stations (within town centreswherever possible), and towns at theconvergence of bus routes, will act asccoooorrddiinnaatteedd hhuubbss for regional andlocal transport networks. As far aspossible, services converging on ahub will be coordinated on an hourlyor half-hourly ‘pulse timetable’ so thattransfer times are minimised. Busesshould carry a uniform livery toemphasise their coordinated nature.

7. IInntteerrcchhaannggee ffaacciilliittiieess at hubs mustmake train-bus and bus-bus transfersas convenient as practicable.

8. Within urban areas, buses mustreceive a level of pprriioorriittyy overprivate car traffic consistent withtheir occupancy.

9. FFaarreess must be set to compete withthe car, and must continue to allowfree transfers between rail and busservices on a single easy-to-purchase ticket. Date-to-date ticketswith sensible discounts must bemade available to regular travellers.Travel within origin and destinationcities should be included asdescribed in the previous section.

10.Passenger concerns about ssaaffeettyy,,sseerrvviiccee aanndd cclleeaannlliinneessss must betaken seriously and met withadequa te s t a f f i ng , ‘ imageconsciousness’ and on-train facilities.

A vital component of public transport incountry Victoria is bus services withinregional cities and towns. Of peopleasked in a government survey why theydid not use the train for country travel,62% cited the need for a car at theirdestination.32 Interestingly, ‘the train is tooslow’ was not a significant reason givenfor not using the train. Decent town busservices in regional centres, focussed onthe railway station and town centre andcoordinated with trains, would eliminatethe need for a car in a significantproportion of these cases.

Again, these services should be plannedalong the same principles given above forMelbourne, given that most regional townshave population densities similar toMelbourne suburbs. (Geelong, Ballaratand Bendigo once supported tramnetworks of a similar standard toMelbourne’s.) As with regional busservices, it should be possible to combinetown bus and train travel on the one ticket.

What implications would a genuine triple-bottom-line strategy have for roadplanning in Melbourne? The starting pointwould be the commonplace observationthat people dislike traffic congestion. Justas the strategy would set a target forpublic transport mode share, so it wouldalso establish performance standardsfor road congestion, using level-of-service indicators already familiar totraffic engineers.

The key policy shift would come fromconceding, as is now the consensusamong transport planners andcommunities almost everywhere otherthan Australia, that cities cannot hopeto build their way out of trafficcongestion. There is precious little to begained from new roads, and much to belost. Once people feel free to shift toalternative transport modes with no realloss in convenience, the needs of roadusers can be better accommodatedwithin the existing, already veryextensive, road network.

An example of the kind of objective weenvisage for road planning is provided bythe Perth Metropolitan Transport Strategy:“To provide relatively congestion-free off-peak road travel, while limiting the percapita cost of providing and maintainingthe Region’s road system.”

The way forward in road planning lies inidentifying the kind of road projects thatassist traffic flow but without furtherentrenching car dependence, whichcreates more congestion problems in thefuture. The elimination of railway levelcrossings is one such project (Project 9).This not only helps both road and rail trafficto travel more freely andreliably, but also reducesthe incidence of accidents,and ensures that footpathsurfaces are not broken upby railway tracks—animportant issue for users ofwheelchairs, prams andtrolleys. Last but notleast, it provides anopportunity to redesignrailway stations as properbus-rail interchanges.

A pressing issue in roadplanning, both presentand future, is the questionof heavy freight vehiclesusing residential streets.Our envisaged transportplan would examineoptions for road freightreduction that do not

solve a problem in one place only tocreate a bigger problem in another. Aplausible strategy could include thefollowing elements:

1. Encourage greater use of rail forheavy freight, particularly inter-cityfreight, through regulatory reform anddirect incentives.

2. Ban the use of super-heavy vehiclessuch as B-doubles and B-triples. TheUK and Europe have banned thesevehicles and their economies havenot self-destructed.

3. Regulate the operation of medium-sized vehicles, and require them touse freeways.

4. Move the generators of heavy roadfreight to areas near freeway exits andrail sidings, if they are not alreadylocated in such places. As freight-intensive industries generally employfew people, the effect on localeconomies would be minimal.

SummaryThe secret to providing public transportthat people will use, as demonstrated incities all over the world, is a seamlessintegrated network of high-frequencytrain, tram and bus services, operating atall the times people want to travel. Thecombination of high frequency, easytransfers, generous operating hours andsensible fares provides, for virtually alltrips, a level of convenience approachingthat of private car travel.

How To Do Road Planning

A few of these lines have already beenrestored as tourist railways, but wouldsupport regular passenger services.Needless to say, good policy does notdistinguish between ‘services for tourists’and ‘services for commuters’ (or anyother class of traveller). Just as whenresponding to road traffic demand, thefact that people travel is enough.

Line Estimated costGeelong to Queenscliff $100 million

Warrnambool to Port Fairy $120 million

Woodend to Daylesford $140 million

Castlemaine to Maldon $50 million

Springhurst to Rutherglen $50 million

Wangaratta to Bright $200 million

Bairnsdale to Orbost $250 million

Lang Lang to Wonthaggi $140 million

to broad gauge statewide, this would becounter to the trend toward nationwidestandard-gauge infrastructure. As astandardised interstate freight network isthe stated purpose of gauge conversion,the funds necessary to convert thenetwork should be provided by theCommonwealth. (The total cost amountsto about the same as upgrading one ruralhighway.) In accordance with the long-term needs of the system, all new rollingstock purchased in Victoria should begauge-convertible.

Gauge conversion should proceed inphases, with conversion of the Ballaratgroup of lines to commence immediatelyso as to remedy some dysfunctionalconsequences of the current break ofgauge in western Victoria. The Melbournesuburban network would be the lastconverted (contingent on new regaugeablerolling stock) and could be converted intwo phases reflecting the division into twoseparate operating entities.

Restoration of Some Dismantled Lines

Rural Victoria includes many majorrecreational destinations located at the endof dismantled rail lines. In the longer term,some (but by no means all) of these linescould be rebuilt as part of a programme topromote environmentally responsibletourism. As lower priority projects, they arenot included in the above costing.

The $550 million promised by the BracksGovernment for upgrading regional railservices could do much more than justprovide high-speed commuter trains tofour regional cities. Our alternativeprogramme envisages a renewal ofpassenger rail throughout Victoria, withfrequent ‘reasonably speedy trains’running between most major regionalcities in less time than it would take by car,and servicing in-between destinationsfrom early morning until late evening.

•Restore train services to Ararat,Hamilton, Portland, Mildura,Bairnsdale and Leongatha.

•Restore cross-country services:Geelong to Ballarat, Maryborough toBendigo, Toolamba to Echuca.

•Upgrade track to support consistent160kph running.

•Commit to regular track maintenanceacross the system.

Gauge ConversionAs part of the rail renewal, a programmeis required to convert the remainder ofVictoria’s rail track to standard gauge, thede facto national standard. In the longterm it is impossible to run a coherentstatewide rail freight and passengernetwork with islands of different railgauges. While it would be easier to revert

Project 7. A revitalised country rail networkIndicative cost $500 million plus $50 million per year (excluding gauge conversion)

Prior to World War II, virtually every townin Victoria had a train service. There is nodoubt that this helped maintain thestatus of rural Victoria alongside theburgeoning metropolis of Melbourne andthe large regional cities. Who today isaware that the first Victorian townoutside Melbourne to have its ownelectricity supply was not Geelong orBallarat or Bendigo, but rather Nhill in thestate’s far west?

While we cannot realistically proposerestoration of rail services to all Victoria’srural towns, equity demands that all butthe smallest have some form of publictransport access. Country bus services atpresent are a hit-and-miss proposition,with many important locations left out ofthe network, and existing services poorly

coordinated. Even the seasoned V/Linetraveller would not necessarily know thatbesides the advertised V/Line coachservices there are a large number of localbus routes, both urban and rural. Yetthese routes are so poorly coordinatedwith the V/Line network that it wouldscarcely help most travellers even if theydid know about them.

A comprehensive network of country busroutes is required to complement anddeliver additional patronage to the revivedregional rail network proposed above. Forvery little additional cost over that of thepresent system, every population centre inVictoria can be brought within a network ofbus routes with a two-hourly basicfrequency (less in more remote areas). Thisimproved system could also subsume

much of the rural school bus function,which accounts for a large part of thecountry transport budget.

As an example, the map below depicts apossible bus network to support theregion surrounding Wangaratta in north-east Victoria. This region is typical of‘settled Victoria’ in supporting apopulation density comparable to that ofEuropean countries like Sweden orIreland. It also supports a substantialtourist population, having the Rutherglenwine region to the north and the highcountry to the south.

Project 8. An inter-regional bus network for VictoriaIndicative cost $40 million per year (over current cost)

Proposed Bus Network: North East Victoria

and Nunawading by lowering the railwayline would cost some $20 million each(the cost of the Boronia project). There isalso a clear need to remove crossings onthe Glen Waverley line at Burke Road andGlenferrie Road; as these roads carrytram routes the cost would be somewhatgreater, but the benefit to train and tramtravellers, not to mention motorists, iswithout question.

The most urgent locations for levelcrossing removal are primary arterial roadssuch as Springvale Road. The first stageof the elimination project would remove alllevel crossings on roads carrying morethan 50,000 vehicles a day. A secondstage would remove crossings onsecondary arterial roads carrying morethan 20,000 vehicles a day. The third, leasturgent stage would remove all remainingcrossings. At each stage, priority would begiven to roads that also carry tram lines.

As an example, removal of the twoSpringvale Road crossings at Springvale

In the 1950s and 1960s, before itbecame obsessed with freeways, theCRB had an ongoing programme ofeliminating all level crossings inMelbourne. With the advent of thefreeway frenzy this programme was lefthalf-finished. It should be resumedimmediately. For reasons of aestheticsand urban integrity, level crossingelimination is best accomplished bylowering the railway (as at Elsternwick inthe 1960s and the more recent Boroniastation project) and not by raising theroad (as at the notoriously uglyHuntingdale and Oakleigh interchanges).

Project 9. Level crossing eliminationIndicative cost $500 million

Project 10. Triple-Bottom-Line Tax ReformIndicative benefit $630 million per year Australia-wide, $110 million per year in VictoriaThe most immediately beneficialimprovements to public transport arethose that make real changes ‘on theground’, such as we have suggestedabove. However, in the longer termattention must be given to the deeperstructural impediments to publictransport use. Among the mostimportant are the Australian tax rules,which contain a number of provisionsfavouring car use and discouragingpublic transport use.

The most commonly ‘packaged’ item isa car. This can be attractive no matterwhat your salary. For a start, cars andcar parking are subject to a discountedrate of FBT [fringe benefits tax]. Forexample, using the statutory formulamethod to calculate the taxable valueof the car, the FBT rate depends onhow far you travel each year. It rangesfrom 26 per cent for less than 15,000kilometres to 7 per cent for more than40,000 kilometres per year. So thefurther you travel, the lower the rate.—Marilyn Smith, The Age (Business), 23 March 2002

This is only the most egregious exampleof the tax system providing a positiveincentive to drive as much as possible, asoften as possible. Anecdotally, there areplenty of cases of company-car ownersgoing on gratuitous driving expeditions inorder to ‘clock up’ enough kilometres toclaim their tax break. By contrast, salary-packaging of public transport ticketsincurs the full FBT rate, equivalent toabout 95% of the ticket price. This helpsexplain why company and government

cars comprise 40% of peak hour trafficand 20% of all traffic, despite comprisingonly 16.5% of car sales.33

A tax system based on triple-bottom-lineprinciples would work so as to discourageactivities with a negative environmental orsocial impact, and encourage (via taxconcessions) alternatives that lack thesenegative impacts. At the very least, the taxsystem should not unfairly penalisetaxpayers for choosing a transport modeother than the car.

Specific proposals for tax reform include:

•Developing salary packagingarrangements that are neutral withrespect to employee choice of transport,as recommended under FederalGovernment greenhouse reductionstrategies. Specifically, remove FBTarrangements that reward additional cartravel, and allow employees to ‘cash in’parking entitlements without suffering atax penalty.

•Abolishing the 10% GST on publictransport fares, by zero-rating them asis already done with food. The cost torevenue is not great and would beoffset by economic savings fromincreased public transport use.

•Reinstating the automatic CPIindexation of fuel excise. Motoristscannot consider themselves exemptfrom inflation while public transportusers face regular CPI-relatedincreases in fares.

•Imposing ‘luxury taxes’ for new cars(other than for farm use) on the basisof weight and engine power, ratherthan purchase price.

•Adopting a weight-based vehicleregistration system (with appropriateconcessions for farmers).

•Adopting a scale of petrol taxes thatreduces with increasing distancefrom capital cities.

The FBT subsidy to company cars hasbeen estimated at $750 million Australia-wide,34 of which at least 20% isattributable to Victoria. On the otherhand, the revenue raised by the GST onpublic transport fares is estimated as$120 million Australia-wide and $40million from Melbourne.35 So even ifreform were limited to abolishing thecompany car subsidy and removing GSTon public transport, the net revenuegenerated would be substantial, andcould be used for public transportfunding or for tax cuts elsewhere.

Large new roads do not help toencourage green modes andsustainable modes of transport. Theyadd to congestion and pollution andthey trigger a destructive process ofsuburbanisation of the countryside andthe ubiquitous ‘shedscape’ of [superhardware stores], drive through fastfood restaurants and other out-of-townparaphernalia. They destroy urban livingand destroy the countryside in one fellswoop.

—John Whitelegg, writing in Dissent, 2002

We can no longer avoid the question ofwhat kind of city Melbourne is to be. Onthe one hand is the road lobby’s vision ofan antipodean Los Angeles, now beingpursued with the wholehearted supportof the State Government. On the otherhand is the public transport vision, vocallysupported by a majority of ordinaryMelburnians in the Metropolitan Strategyworkshops, and ultimately less costly tocitizens in all three senses of the triplebottom line: economic, environmentaland social. Around the world, cities from

Vancouver to Perth are reviving the publictransport alternatives to freeway-building.

Even in Melbourne politicians are unable toignore entirely the calls to improve publictransport, even while they are captivatedby the siren song of the road lobby. We aretold we can have the best of both worlds:lots of freeways and good public transport.

But no-one who has ever run ahousehold budget should take this talkseriously. We do not, for example, pay toinstall an electric stove and a gas stove inthe one kitchen. It is simply bad policy tospend money on one measure and thenspend an equally large sum on anothermeasure that directly undermines thefirst, in the way that freeways underminepublic transport. Any government thatproposes such a thing is fiscallyirresponsible. In practice, there is neverenough money to keep the road lobbysatisfied and do anything serious aboutpublic transport, and with the road lobbyin charge of planning it is inevitably thepublic transport measures that gather

dust on the shelf—like the Rowville andEast Doncaster train lines over the threedecades since 1969.

If we are to plan transport in a responsiblemanner, we cannot help but treat thefreeway-based city and the publictransport-based city as alternatives.

Getting Over the

‘It Can’t Be Done’ Factor

Institutional opposition to public transportis reinforced by the propaganda of theroad lobby, which portrays publictransport as something that is nice inprinciple but flawed in practice. Evenwell-meaning people can be induced tobelieve that big public transportimprovements are too costly, or won’tattract enough passengers, or won’twork for some other reason. Thesemyths, like the myth that freeways curetraffic congestion, are easily cast asideonce people are given the facts abouttransport in other ‘world cities’.

Part III:Getting There From Here

Comparative costing of road and public transport proposals

Our proposal Cost ($million) Road lobby proposal Cost ($million)

Rowville train line 120 1 / yr Scoresby / Mitcham Freeway 1800 18 / yr

East Doncaster train line 350 2 / yr Eastern Freeway thru Royal Pk 600 6 / yr

Airport train extension 50 1 / yr Tulla / Calder Fwy intersection 250 2 / yr

Other train extensions 488 2 / yr Merri Creek Freeway 400 4 / yr

Bus network improvements 30 / yr Second West Gate Bridge 1000 10 / yr

Tram gap-filling programme 215 2 / yr Eastern Ring Road completion 800 8 / yr

Level crossing elimination 500 Victoria Pde flyovers 50

Re-staffing the system 25 / yr Dingley Freeway 300 3 / yr

Late night services 5 / yr Hallam Bypass 165 2 / yr

Revitalised country rail 500 50 / yr Geelong Road upgrade 270 3 / yr

Inter-regional bus network 40 / yr Calder Highway upgrade 500 5 / yr

Geelong train improvements 5 1 / yr Geelong East Ring Road 1000 10 / yr

Geelong bus network 4 / yr Geelong West Ring Road 380 4 / yr

Remove GST on fares (Vic) 40 / yr Subsidy to company cars (Vic) 150 / yr

Total 2228 203 / yr Total 7515 225 / yr

We have provided indicative costings for our proposed public transport projects. It is worthwhile, however, to do a back-to-backcost comparison between these projects and equivalent road projects as proposed by the road lobby.

The annual cost of maintaining, policing and managing a major road is equal to around 1% of the upfront cost. Though attentionis rarely drawn to the heavy cost of maintaining roads, a road certainly does not cease to cost money when construction iscomplete. Even a two-lane arterial road with light traffic costs $9,000 per kilometre per year to maintain, compared with $3,000for a double-track railway that can carry many times the volume of people and goods.36

a sham ‘public consultation’ process.The PTUA together with over 40community and environment groupsthroughout the area took part in thisprocess of written submissions andhearings, and forced the inquiry panel toconcede that a public transportalternative could have comparedfavourably with the freeway option, had itbeen considered in the first place. In fact,preliminary work done by independentconsultants had found that if 1.15 percent of road users shifted to publictransport, the benefits to traffic would beas great as from building the freeway.37

However, in case there was ever anydoubt that the official conclusion hadbeen determined in advance, the panelruled that consideration of a publictransport alternative was outside theterms of reference of what purported tobe an ‘Environment Effects’ Statement!

Genuine transport planning does not pre-empt alternatives based on bureaucraticwhim. The Scoresby Freeway has neverbeen subjected to a real test against thealternatives, because the road lobby hasnot allowed it to.

the Scoresby Freeway, at a cost of $1billion, would complete the ring-freeway butfor the ‘missing link’ between Ringwoodand Greensborough. Although the roadplanners said that this connection “woulduse existing roads for the forseeablefuture”, there is no doubt that their ultimateintention is to complete the entire ring road,destroying the Yarra Valley and consuminganother $1 billion in the process.

What happens when people inMelbourne’s outer east are asked abouttheir real transport needs?Overwhelmingly they say that travel by caris not too bad (given that peak-hourcongestion will always be with us), but thatpublic transport is abysmal. The outer easthas some of the worst public transport inAustralia. Many of the bus routes stoprunning even before 5pm on weekdays,and don’t run on weekends at all.

Unfortunately the bureaucrats in charge ofthe Scoresby Corridor EES were lessinterested in the community’s real needsthan in obtaining a rubber stamp for theScoresby Freeway, and build up pressurefor the missing link through the greenwedge. When released, the EESrecommended construction of theScoresby Freeway. It was then put through

Every road anywhere in the world within100km of a major city carries localtraffic. The M25 in London is a goodexample. This was billed as a “road ofnational strategic importance” whosepurpose was to move goods from theNorth of England to mainland Europe. Itcost 1 billion pounds to build and hashad another 1 billion pounds spent on itsince. It is Europe’s biggest car park. Itis jammed full of traffic 24 hours a day.It is used to take kids to school overdistances of two or three miles. It isused to go to the shops, to go to thegolf club, to go to the gym. It is not anational strategic corridor. It is a piddlylocal road that was put in over theprotests of local authorities whowanted something better.

—John Whitelegg, address at Dept ofInfrastructure, 12 Feb 2002

In 1996, the government commissionedan Environment Effects Statement (EES)for transport in the so-called ‘ScoresbyCorridor’. The Scoresby Corridorextends from Ringwood in the north, viaDandenong, to Frankston in the south.The only thing these suburbs have incommon with one another is that a 35-year-old freeway reservation runs thelength of them.

At this time the Kennett Government hadjust released a transport policydocument, Transporting Melbourne. Itcontained a proposal for a ring-freewayencircling Melbourne, known as the“Metropolitan Orbital”. Much of this ring-freeway now exists: the Western RingRoad from Laverton to Broadmeadowsand the Northern Ring Road continuingon to Greensborough. BeyondGreensborough there is no freeway oreven a reservation for one, but there aremany homes and a lot of sensitivebushland in the Yarra Valley greenwedge, which includes areas likeHeidelberg, Eltham and Warrandyte.

From Ringwood to the south lies the oldScoresby Freeway reservation. Building

Avoiding the issue: the Scoresby EES

The Yarra River near Heidelberg, under threat from the completion of the Eastern Ring Road.

Is Melbourne too spread-out for publictransport?It is fashionable to argue that public transport can only be viablein high-density, compact cities with lots of apartment blocks andpoor road networks. Certainly rail and metro systems have acertain ‘natural advantage’ in such cities, but public transportcan also be made to work in medium-density cities likeMelbourne if it is sufficiently attractive to passengers. Recall that100 years ago, Melbourne was the lowest-density city in theworld not in spite of, but because it had extensive publictransport that made it easy to travel to the suburbs. Melbourne’surban density has not markedly declined since then, nor has itdeclined relative to other cities with well-used public transport.

City or Period of Overall urbanSuburb settlement density (/ha)Melbourne 1971 18.1Melbourne 1981 15.9Melbourne 1991 16.8Melbourne 1996 17.9 38

Toronto 1991 23.7Vancouver 1991 14.0Yarraville 1890s–1920s 25.4Balwyn 1910s–1940s 24.9Gardenvale 1880s–1920s 21.7Keysborough 1960s–1980s 36.7Wheelers Hill 1970s–1990s 26.0Bayswater 1960s–1970s 22.8

Do we have to give up cars?It is often said that the car is here to stay,and that most people will never give uptheir private vehicles. We agree.

The elimination of the car is both unlikelyand unnecessary. All that is needed torelieve Melbourne’s traffic problems is toshift a small, but significant, minority ofcar trips—about one journey in five—fromthe car to walking, cycling or publictransport. Lots of local travel, such asgrocery shopping, will still be carried outlargely by car; people will still take drivesin the country; most school teachers willstill drive to work.

There are two reasons why more trips aremade by car than would otherwise be thecase. The first, as we have seen, is thatpeople in Melbourne often lack aneffective choice between cars and othermodes of transport. The second is thatpeople often have ‘perverse incentives’ todrive cars: the car is packaged into itsowner’s salary for a fraction of its truecost, and the owner pays none of theongoing costs but instead is penalised ifthe car is not driven far enough or oftenenough. Both these reasons point toserious problems in public policy, but toacknowledge these problems is not tocall for restrictions on car use.

An extreme version of the car-is-inevitableargument claims that once people owncars, they will use them for all their travel,regardless of the alternatives. This is aninsulting attitude: it assumes most peopleare stupid. High car ownership does notnecessarily mean high car use. Manyoverseas cities renowned for theirsuccessful public transport have carownership rates just as high—or higher—than Melbourne.

High car ownership does not mean thatpeople will never use public transport orother alternatives. It simply means thatthey don’t have to use public transport,and will not unless it provides anacceptably high quality of service. Atpresent in Melbourne, public transportservice quality is poor so it attracts fewcustomers. In cities where publictransport is of high quality—fast,frequent, integrated, safe and cheap—itis used extensively, although people stilluse their cars too!

Won’t we just have to pour moremoney into public transport subsidies?It is the cost of operating the system onceit’s built that arouses most scepticismfrom policymakers who are otherwise

supportive of public transport. Proposalsfor increased service frequency, morestation staff, train conductors and so onraise the prospect of committing largeamounts of money, on an ongoing basis,for what is seen as a doubtful return.

The economic discussion in Part Iprovides the key to making better publictransport pay its way. Public transportcompetes with the private car for itscustomers, and its success in attractingcustomers, not some innate superiority ofprivate cars, determines its financialviability. The key is better service, leadingto greatly increased patronage and costrecovery across the entire system.

There is empirical evidence from here inMelbourne to test this hypothesis. In early1992, the PTUA persuaded thebureaucracy to trial better services on theSandringham line. Train services wereincreased from every 20 minutes to every15 minutes during the day, and from every30 minutes to every 20 minutes in theevenings. (It turned out that theseincreases were possible without increasingthe number of train crews.) Running timeswere also sped up by two minutes.

Within a few months patronage hadincreased markedly, and the additionalrevenue was more than covering the smalladditional expense of the new services.Patronage increased by 33%, but revenuewent up by 40% (because of the increasein full-fare paying passengers).

The tyranny of factArguments that ‘it can’t be done’ forwhatever reason can always be rebuffedby pointing to a real-world example of areal public transport improvement that hascoaxed real people out of real cars,generated real revenue to offset subsidies,and has done so in a city with lowerpopulation density than Melbourne. Suchan example is the Northern Suburbs line inPerth—the model for our proposedRowville and East Doncaster lines.

The original Northern Suburbs line (built inthe early 1990s) had a total cost of $230million for 33km of track—including landacquisition, electrification, stations, rollingstock, and associated roadworks. Thisworks out as $7 million per kilometre. Toput this in perspective, the ScoresbyFreeway is now projected to cost $1350million for 40km of road, or $34 million

per kilometre. The Northern Suburbs linecarries around 30,000 passengers a day:the equivalent of six lanes of road traffic.One-quarter of its patronage comes fromjourneys that were previously made bycar, demonstrating that people who nowdrive will get out of their cars and usepublic transport if it’s good enough.

A Question ofPoliticsThe Victorian Government is obsessedwith road-building, but not becauseintellectually detached public servantshave rationally weighed up the pros andcons of roads and public transport andfound that roads are superior. Rather, it isobsessed with road-building because apowerful road lobby has entrenched itselfin the institutions of government.

However, it is ultimately not bureaucratswho control government policy, butpoliticians. State Premiers and TransportMinisters are in a position to bring aboutreal changes in not just transport policybut the institutional makeup of planningbodies, as the negative example of JeffKennett’s Department of Infrastructureshows. Conversely, politicians who havethe power to change things but allow thepresent sorry situation to continue areneglecting their duty to the public.

The Western Australian election of 2001shows how institutional change can bebrought about by politicians with the will orthe political mandate to do so. What is toprevent a similar occurrence in Melbourne?There is now a broad constituency forpublic transport, as the MetropolitanStrategy forums demonstrate. A majority ofVictorians support better public transport intheory, and would be more inclined tosupport it in practice if government policywere more conducive to it. And as we haveshown, the essential measures to allowmore Victorians to use public transportregularly are neither difficult nor costly toimplement. It is only the opposition of theroad lobby and the laziness of politiciansthat stands in the way.

It’s time to move on from the car-dominated vision of 1950s transportplanning to something more appropriateto the 21st century. It’s up to us to makeit happen: for all Victorians to speak outand demand better, faster, safer,healthier, cheaper, friendlier publictransport; and for their electedrepresentatives to listen, and lead.

To cater for night services within a consistentfare structure, make daily tickets valid for 24hours from first use. Retain the policy of 2amexpiry for two-hour tickets validated after 6pm,but allow two-hour tickets validated betweenmidnight and 4am to be used until 6am.

Institutional Change9. Coordination of ServicesReestablish public control over publictransport services in Melbourne through aTransport Authority (TA) modelled on theVerkehsverbund concept in Europe. Establisha governing structure comprising StateGovernment, local councils, industry and userrepresentation. Charge the TA withresponsibility for administering the faresystem, collecting and distributing revenue,and setting routes and timetables for all publictransport in Melbourne. Renegotiate existingcontracts between private operators and theState Government so that private operatorsact as contractors to the TA, and are paid forthe services they provide on a ‘cost plusmargin’ basis.

Establish a separate State Governmentagency to coordinate country train and busservices, in consultation with local councilsand communities. Actual services may becontracted to one or more private operators,or provided directly by the agency. In thelonger term, encourage each non-metropolitan council to set up its own TA incollaboration with local community groups,with responsibility for town bus services andregional services centred on the localgovernment area.

10. Transport Infrastructure PlanningVest all planning powers for road and publictransport infrastructure in a newly constitutedDepartment of Planning and Infrastructure,following the example of Western Australia.Appoint experienced planners, rather thanroad engineers, to head up the newdepartment. Abolish Vicroads as a separateentity and absorb its functions into the newstructure. Give the department a singlebudget for transport infrastructure andoperations, to spend in accordance withtransparent economic, social andenvironmental criteria, with no artificialdistinctions drawn between ‘road funding’ and‘public transport funding’. Ensure that thecommunity is involved in the evaluation ofproposals, and that planning decisions aresubject to independent review.

In order to guarantee that people have agenuine choice to use public transport,declare a moratorium on new urban freewaysuntil public transport has been improved touseable levels, as outlined inRecommendations 1 through 8.

Supporting Infrastructure4. Train SpeedsMaintain all passenger rail track in Victoria tospeed standards allowing consistent 80kphrunning (or better) in metropolitan Melbourneand 160kph running in the remainder of Victoria.

5. Tram and Bus PriorityImplement effective priority for trams and busesover other traffic, with the aim of eliminating allunnecessary delays to services, through:

•greater use of barriers on wide streets toseparate trams from cars, as on roads likeFlemington Road;

•enabling the interruption of traffic signals fortrams at all intersections (as has beenpossible since 1992);

•shortening of signal cycles on majorintersections to minimise delays to tramsand other traffic; and

•enforcing the ‘fairway’ system.

These measures should be implementedin consultation with all relevant transport,law enforcement, municipal andcommunity organisations.

6. Bus Route RestructureReconfigure metropolitan bus routes to bedirect and avoid complicated detours. Ensurethat routes follow the arterial road grid asmuch as possible, and provide convenientinterchange with trains at all stations en route.Design bus stops at major intersections tomake transfers between buses as convenientas possible. The network grid should besufficiently fine to ensure that the vast majorityof locations are within walking distance(400–600 metres) of a bus stop. Attempts toconnect all possible origins and destinationswith a single route should be avoided.

Customer Service7. Staff and TicketingReturn full-time staff to all railway stations fromfirst to last train, and conductors to all tramand train services, except those with lowpatronage and no security problems. Havestaff sell tickets alongside ticket machines atstations, and charge all staff with a duty toassist passengers. Remove ticket machinesfrom all trams that have conductors, to boostseating capacity and reduce operating costs.Remove the requirement to revalidate alreadyvalid tickets. Use the police as a targetedemergency backup for front-line staff, andensure that staff have a clear view ofplatforms, vehicles and waiting areas.

8. FaresRetain and extend the multimodal fare systemwith better integration of metropolitan andcountry fares and the abolition of all single-mode tickets. Have the multimodal faresystem cover all public transport services,including Skybus and Nightrider. Set fares at alevel competitive with private car travel.Provide periodical ticket holders with attractivediscounts and free family travel on weekendsand public holidays.

This list itemises the key recommendations fortransport in Melbourne and Victoria notcovered in the 10 projects of Part II.

Operational Improvements1. Service FrequenciesImprove service frequencies on all urban train,tram and bus services to every 10 minutes orbetter between 5am and 10pm, and every 15minutes between 10pm and 2am, seven daysa week. Retain existing service frequencieswhen better than this. A service is considered‘urban’ if it operates entirely in a built up area.

In country Victoria, adopt a basic frequency ofone train per hour between 6am and midnightseven days a week; higher for Geelong, Ballarat,Bendigo and Gippsland services and lower forservices to remote towns such as Mildura.

2. Night ServicesImplement 24-hour, 7-day public transport inMelbourne with a system of night buses andtrams between 2am and 5am.

Provide 15-minute night tram services onthree key routes:

•Carlton (Lygon St / Elgin St) to Prahran viaSwanston St, St Kilda Rd and CommercialRd (also serving major hospitals);

•North Fitzroy to St Kilda via Brunswick St,Collins St, Southbank, St Kilda Light Railand Fitzroy St; and

• Southbank to St Kilda via Collins St,Victoria Pde and Chapel St.

Upgrade the Nightrider buses to bidirectionalhalf-hourly services, accepting Metcards inline with Recommendation 8, and mirroring allcurrent and proposed rail corridors, withappropriate deviations to serve suburbs suchas Bundoora.

3. Express RunningImprove travel times for urban train servicesthrough express running patterns that areconsistent for any given route, apply at alltimes rather than just in peak hour, and ensurethat every station receives at least onestopping service every ten minutes. Anexample is described in our Rowville railproject, Project 1.

If necessary, express trains can be alternatedwith stopping trains that service intermediatestations on the same line. Thus on theFrankston line, a City–Richmond–SouthYarra–Caulfield–Cheltenham–all stationsservice every 10 minutes might alternate with astopping-all-stations service to Cheltenhamthat departs immediately following the express.

For country services, high-speed expressesshould alternate with all-stations local servicesin all rail corridors.

List of Recommendations

Index1969 transport plan 12-13,23,24absence of services 11,12access fees (freight) 5access to stations 19-20Airport train 10,22,24air quality 7Alamein line 25alienation 8-9Appleyard, D 8asthma 3,7attitudes to PT 2,15,37'balanced' transport 12,14Batchelor, P 16,29bicycles 3,4,7,8,20Boronia station 19,34Bracks Government 14,16,23,24,28,30Brisbane 3,24,26Britain 5,9,36Burke Road 26,34bus route restructuring 22,30-31,33,38bus-train coordination 19-20,31bus/tram priority 18-19,31,38buses in country towns 31carbon dioxide 5,7-8car dependence 8-9,10,31car ownership 9,37carpooling 8Chadstone shopping centre 26chauffeuring 9Chicago 26children 8-9choice in transport 7,11-12,17,21-22,37'choice' passengers 10,12,17,21,27-29circumferential travel 21Citadis trams 28cleanliness 28climate change 7-8coal-fired electricity 7-8comfort 28company cars 34congestion 3-6,10,31convenience 17,20,21,27-29,31coordination 11-12,15-16,19-20cost of car ownership 9,21cost of PT and roads 35,37country Victoria 30-31,32,33coverage of PT 11-12,21-22,31,33cross-suburban travel 21-22customer service 28cycling 3,4,7,8,20damage to roads 5Doncaster railway 10,12,22,24,26diminishing returns 3disability 9,27-28Eastern Freeway 10,12-13,24economy 3-6,37economies of scale 3,16,29,37ecotourism 32elders 9electrification 25

energy use 4,5,7-8Engineers, Institution of (Aust) 6Engwicht, D 8environment 3,7-8exercise 7express running 15,18,23,38family travel 29fare evasion 27fares 11,29,31,38'Fast Rail' 30feeder buses 11,20'feminist car' 9fiscal responsibility 35fitness 7France 30free market 11-12,15-16,19freeways 3-6,12-15,31,35freight 3-5,7,31,32frequency of service 12,17,19-20,28,30,38friendly streets 8fringe benefits tax 34fringe suburbs 25fuel excise 34Gallop Government (Perth) 15,37gaps in network 11-12,21-22gauge standardisation 32generated traffic 6global warming 7-8green wedges 25,36greenhouse effect 7-8GST on public transport 34Hamburg 15Hamer, R 13,14health 4,7Heidelberg Freeway 12-13,36high-speed trains 24,30High Street Road 6household energy use 8Hume Highway 4incentives to drive 3,6,34,37independence, loss of 9induced traffic 6industry 5Infrastructure Planning Council 14,15institutional change 15,38interchange facilities 20,22,31just-in-time logistics 5Kennett Government 3,14,28,37Knox, City of 5,22,23,26Kyoto Protocol 7land use 4,5,7,20level crossing elimination 31,34'light rail' as alternative to trains 23liveable streets 8local government 3,14,15-16,19,38London 3,11,26,27Los Angeles 6,10,12,35M25 ring freeway (UK) 36market share 3,14,28Melbourne Transportation Plan1969 12-13Melbourne University terminus 26mental health 9Merri Creek Freeway 12-13

Metcard 27Metropolitan Strategy 2,6,10,37midi-buses 22missing links 11-12,21-22Mitchell Freeway (Perth) 4'mobility' 8mode share 3,14,28mode shift 4,7-8,37Monash Freeway 6,12-13,14,18Monash University 17,21,22,23,25,26Montreal 17Mulgrave Freeway 6,14,23multimodal fares 11,20,29multimodal journeys, need for 19-20Mumford, L 8myths about PT 35-37new residential areas 11-12,22,25new stations 25New York 11,26,28night services 26,29,38noise 4,7Northern Suburbs line (Perth) 4,15,37OECD 6open space 4,7overcrowding 28parallel services 11,15Paris 11,12park-and-ride 20parking 4,20passenger information 28patronage decline 12pedestrians 3,4,7,8-9,31periodical tickets 29Perth 4,15,16,18,26,31,35,37Pill, J 28planning 10,12-15,16,38police 19,28,38politics 3,15,35-37pollution 4,6,7population density 10,11,15,30,36ports 4prevalence of car travel 3,12,37priority for trams/buses 18-19,31,38privatisation 14,15-16,19,27,28public forums 2,10,37pulse network 30-31radial bias of travel 21reasonably speedy trains 32regional/rural Victoria 30-31,32,33reliability 17,18,28retail hubs at stations 20returns to scale 3,16,29ring freeway 13,21,36road funding 3,35road lobby 5,8,12-15,35-37road noise 7road planning 12-14,31,38road trauma 4roads of 'national importance' 36route structure (buses) 22,30-31,33,38Rowville railway 12,22,23Royal Commission onEnvironmental Pollution (UK) 7

Notes1 Proportion of all trips taken by PT, from the Victorian Activityand Travel Survey. The proportion of motorised trips taken byPT is 9 per cent.

2 Victoria Police. Operation Countdown,<http://www.operationcountdown.com.au>.See also VicRoads road safety statistics at:<http://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/road_safe/>.

3 Australasian Railway Association. Rail and the Environment:ARA Information Sheet 2, November 1998.

4 Australasian Railway Association. Rail and the Tax Package#1: ARA Information Sheet 1, November 1998.

5 Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment(UK). Transport and the Economy, 1999.

6 Australian Bureau of Statistics. Census of Population andHousing, 1996.

7 Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk RoadAssessment (UK). Trunk Roads and the Generation ofTraffic. HMSO, 1994.

8 Institution of Engineers Australia. Quoted in The IssuesReviewed, Eastern Arterial Extension and Ringwood BypassReview Panel, 1990, p.42.

9 Luk, J. and Chung, E. Induced demand and roadinvestment—an initial appraisal. Research Report ARR 299,ARRB Transport Research, 1997.

10 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (UK).Transport and the Environment, Report No. 18, 1994.

11 World Health Organisation. Community Noise:Environmental Health Criteria Document. Copenhagen, 1993.

12 Australian Greenhouse Office. National Greenhouse GasInventory 2000.

13 Australian Greenhouse Office. Fuel Consumption andthe Environment.<http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/fuellabel/environment.html>.For each litre of petrol used, 2.3kg of carbon dioxide is released.

14 Loy Yang Power. Environment Report. Availableelectronically from <http://www.loyyangpower.com.au>.

15 Mumford, L. The City in History. Penguin, 1966.

16 Appleyard, D. Livable Streets. University of California,Berkeley, 1981.

17 Engwicht, D. Towards an Eco-City: Calming the Traffic.Envirobook, 1992. (Reissued as Reclaiming our Cities andTowns by New Society Publishers, 1993.)

18 Mees, P. A very public solution. Melbourne UniversityPress, 2000.

19 Harrigan, L.J. Victorian Railways to ’62. VictorianRailways, 1962.

20 Davison, G. The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne.Melbourne University Press, 1978.

21 Jane’s Urban Transport Systems. Jane’s Data Division,Surrey, UK. Published annually.

22 A very public solution (note 18).

23 Thomson, J.M. Great Cities and Their Traffic. VictorGollancz, 1977.

24 Anderson, W.K. Roads for the People: A History ofVictoria’s Roads. Vicroads, 1994.

25 Roads for the People (note 24), p.248.

26 Great Cities and Their Traffic (note 23).

27 Newman, P. Quoted in The Bulletin, 2 October 2002.

28 Black, A. Urban Mass Transportation Planning.McGraw–Hill, 1995.

29 Personal communication with railway employees. Connexand M>Train between them own 304 3-car sets (including the4D double-decker train). Current peak services requireapproximately 265 3-car sets to run. This leaves a surplus of39 3-car sets or 19 6-car sets.

30 Sinclair Knight Merz. Public Transport Overview. ScoresbyTransport Corridor EES Working Papers No.1, 1997.

31 Martin Wachs: “Consumer Attitudes towards Transitservice: an interpretive review” in Journal of American Instituteof Planners 42(1), Jan 1976. Cited in Alan Black: Urban MassTransportation Planning, McGraw-Hill, 1995.

32 Victorian Government. Fast Rail to Regional Centres:Executive Summary, 2001.

33 Australasian Railway Association. FBT and Rail: ARAInformation Sheet No. 19, 2000.

34 Diesendorf, M. Subsidies to Fossil Fuels. Institute forSustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney.

35 Figures from Bus Association of Victoria. In 1998–99, totalrevenue (including GST) from Victorian train and tramoperations was $347 million according to the Audit Review ofGovernment Contracts, indicating a GST component ofroughly $31 million. To this figure must be added bus revenueand revenue growth to give roughly $40 million.

36 ARA Information Sheet 2 (note 3).

37 Veitch-Lister Consulting. “Preliminary EconomicAssessment”, in Scoresby Transport Corridor EES WorkingPapers No.2: Addendum, Department of Infrastructure, 1997.

38 Department of Infrastructure. From Donut City to CafeSociety, 1998. All urban density figures are calculated basedon the relevant statistical authority’s definition of the ‘urban’ area.

SACTRA 5,6safe travel 28'safety' zones 28salami tactics 14San Francisco 8school, travel to 9Scoresby Freeway 4,12-13,21,23,36seating, importance of 28service standards 3,11-12,17-31share of trips by PT 3,14,28Short Trip tickets 29Skybus 29'Smart Bus' 15society 3,8-9South Eastern Arterial 6,14Southland shopping centre 25spread-out city 11,36staffing 9,27-28,29,38State Government 3,10,13,21,24,35-37stop-start traffic 6subsidies to transport 3,5,8,15-16,34,37Sunday services 15,21superstops 28surplus trains/trams 17,28Sweden 30Sydney 24,26,27tax reform 29,34technological fads 10,24Thompson, JM 13,16ticketing 14,27,38timetable coordination 11-12,15-16,19,38Toronto 11,12,17,20,22,26,28tourism 32town buses 31traffic lights 18-19train conductors 28,38train speed 18,32,38tram/bus priority 18-19,38tram conductors 27-28,29,38tram stops 28Transport Authority proposal 15-16,19,38travel generators 21-22travel times 6,17-19triple bottom line 3,34trucks 4-5,31urban density 10,11,15,36urban sprawl 8,11,15,25,36value of time 6,17Vancouver 17,35VATS (Victorian Activityand Travel Survey) 3,21Verkehsverbund(Transport Authority) 15-16,19,38Vicroads 13-15,19,38Victoria (country) 30-31,32,33waiting time 17,19walking 3,4,7,8-9,31Waverley Road 6Western Ring Road 5,12-13,36Whitelegg, J 8,35,36Yarra Valley 36Zurich 11,16,18-19

People throughout Melbourne and Victoria are deeply concernedabout the state of public transport. A majority support improvedpublic transport, to help reduce car dependence and alleviatetraffic congestion, pollution and road trauma.

Yet our transport planning bureaucracy has not responded in kind.Instead of improved public transport, the road lobby wants tospend billions of dollars on new freeways to make us even moredependent on cars. Meanwhile, little is done to fix the glaringproblems with our public transport or even admit they exist.

It’s Time to Move explains why a change in transport policy isneeded. Shifting car trips to public transport helps our ‘triplebottom line’: it improves economic efficiency, helps the naturalenvironment, and is good for us as a society.

But people will not get out of their cars and use public transportuntil public transport offers a high-quality, convenient service. Thisdocument explains what must be done. It does not requirespending vast sums of money on new infrastructure, but insteadrequires a new approach to transport planning to curb the powerof the road lobby, and a massive improvement in service frequency,connections and coverage. This has proved to be a success inother cities and promises to be doubly so in Melbourne, with itsgenerous tram and train networks.

It’s time to move on from 1950s-style freeway planning to a 21st-century vision based on public transport, walking and cycling. Thisvision doesn’t require us to give up cars or build more high-rise flats.All it requires is a shift in priorities, from building more and morefreeways to providing a ‘world’s best’ public transport service.

Public Transport Users Association Inc.Org.No. A–6256L

Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000Phone: (03) 9650 7898 www.ptua.org.au

ISBN 0 646 41893 9