Make buses fair, frequent and free

13th of November 2024, 10:21am
Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan):

If there is one thing that I love, it is a good route, and a timely and direct route is the best kind if you are doing it right. People in the inner ring suburbs of Melbourne know what I am talking about. Most of us are spoiled for choice, getting the full benefits of Melbourne’s public transport network with train, tram and bus routes to take us where we want to go, located within walking distance and operating pretty frequently. If you live outside this relative public transport oasis, particularly if you live in Melbourne’s outer growth areas, it is a very, very different story.

Somewhere along the line we dropped the ball on public transport. As Melbourne’s population has grown and its boundaries have sprawled, its public transport options have contracted, and Melbourne continues to sprawl, particularly along the outer growth corridors. The government has a long-held policy to contain 70 per cent of its housing growth within established urban areas through infill development and 30 per cent in greenfield growth areas within the urban growth boundary. Of late this has not been happening so much, with only about 50 per cent of home approvals being built within the established LGAs, well below the 70 per cent target. New housing exploding along the south-eastern and north-western corridors poses a fundamental challenge. In fact I would not be surprised if the 70–30 ratio was reversed in the outer west, with new homes mostly being built in those greenfield growth areas. Homes in well-established areas like Boroondara have only grown 24 per cent in the last 30 years, whereas for the same period homes in Wyndham have increased by an eye-watering 439 per cent.

It is estimated that Melbourne will be home to around 7.5 million people by 2031, and as our population expands our outer suburbs will continue to absorb the brunt of this expansion. This is exemplified by the government’s announcement last week of its plan to release huge tracts of land in greenfield zones in the north-west to accelerate housing development. Public transport is simply not keeping up with this growth.

I have spoken many times in this place about the lack of transport options in the outer western growth area, but even in the established urban areas, those inner and middle rings of the west, the access to public transport is pathetic compared to what is available for residents in the inner and middle rings of the eastern suburbs. Public transport is at its heart an equity issue. We know that a lack of decent public transport entrenches social disadvantage and isolation. It limits people’s access to employment, education, health services and shops. It severely restricts their social life.

In my electorate the access to transport in Wyndham, Brimbank, Hobsons Bay and Melton is nothing short of atrocious, forcing people to rely on private transport and increasing cost-of-living pressures. It is no surprise that there are vast swathes of the west where a typical household will have between three and four private vehicles.

People are really struggling. We hear from so many constituents who are trapped in new developments with no public transport. For example, Pawan is a single mum living with two children in Mount Atkinson. I have spoken before about the appalling state of affairs in Mount Atkinson. There are no trains, no shops, no local services. The nearest shop to simply pick up a bottle of milk or some toilet paper is a 15-minute drive away.

The closest bus stop is a 40-minute walk from Pawan’s home across unsealed road surfaces, and the nearest train station, which is Rockbank, is an hour and 20 minutes. That bus – I should say that would be the first option – does not connect to shops or services, so it is of very limited use. Pawan’s children go to different schools, so she spends about $200 a week in petrol just to get her kids to school and do a bit of shopping – she cannot afford to do much else. The public transport that does exist in the outer west is quite simply not fit for purpose. A recent study which compared the travel times of private cars to public transport in Melton found that the average trip time by car on a weekday was 22.5 minutes. On public transport that same trip was 71.5 minutes – so three times longer, and that is assuming the bus turns up. It is no wonder that households in the west have become so dependent on cars. 23.4 per cent of households in the Melton LGA own three or more vehicles – nearly a quarter of the local population.

More cars on the road means more congestion, more pollution and more carbon emissions – not to mention more individual stress. The further west you go, the worse it gets. This has not happened overnight. The situation is the result of historic planning inertia and underinvestment into public transport by Victorian governments of all persuasions, which is a great pity, because there was a time when our public transport system was the envy of other states. We do acknowledge that this government has spent billions and is committed to enhancing public transport. We recognise its commitment to building new train stations – the news is welcome. But we know those stations are not coming anytime soon. We recognise the commitment to increasing rolling stock. This new stock is also welcome. But we are really barely catching up with growing demand. Besides, these commitments will not lead to much improvement in the western suburbs.

We are well aware of the fiscal realities facing the government in these post-COVID times. We know there is not a lot of extra cash for additional rail infrastructure and that rail infrastructure takes a long, long time to complete. So what can be done quickly to give some relief to our outer-suburban residents who cannot easily access trains? You guessed it – it is buses. Buses are easy to deploy, require no major capital investment and can be up and running in a relatively short time. What we need is a comprehensive bus plan for our western suburbs – one that reconfigures our outmoded bus network to make buses more accessible, more frequent and more reliable. It needs to increase access so that residents are able to walk to a bus stop without needing the stamina of a long-distance runner.

That brings me back to my opening remarks. Who does not love a good route? We need a route review. A bus network review will identify transport black spots and modify routes to reduce waiting times, connect people to other transport modes like train stations and get them to places they want to go to. We need to accelerate the rollout of new zero-emission buses. All of this should be accompanied by a broad-based community information campaign to inform and encourage residents to just hop on a bus. We might need some good old incentives to get people to just hop on a bus, because the reality is that many residents do not have much faith in the second-rate public transport that they have hitherto experienced, particularly out west. With the interminable wait times and the long, convoluted time-consuming routes, it is no wonder people have been put off. So for a period of time let us make them free. We want people to get back into the habit of using buses. We want people to fall in love with buses, and why wouldn’t they? A reconfigured bus network with regular, fast and direct routes would be transformational for so many Victorians, and it is well and truly overdue.

If you look at an interactive network map showing the frequency of trams, trains and buses across Melbourne, the south-eastern part of the map shows a dense pattern of network coverage with some form of transport arriving roughly every 10 minutes or better in inner and middle-ring suburbs. You would think you were living in a proper, modern city. The very, very best you will get in the west is a 20-minute wait beyond that inner ring I spoke of earlier, and if you are talking about the outer ring, wait times range from 40 minutes to, well, never.

A well-known public transport expert by the name of Peter Parker – no, not that Peter Parker – has analysed bus routes across the city and concluded that the lack of services on the outer fringe and in large swathes of the north-west is entrenching inequality. And yet we have the buses. Reconfiguring and expanding our bus network would be the single best thing we could do to improve public transport in Melbourne and, as I have said before, it could be done at the fraction of the cost and time required to build rail infrastructure. All Victorians deserve decent public transport. Buses can address the growing needs of Victorian communities. We just need the government to get on board.

[Council divided on motion]

[Motion failed 6-30]