Wrong Way: Go Back

For historical reasons, our trains and trams are mostly focused on the inner city and destinations along the way. But most people shop, take their children to school or work, locally.

Fifty to seventy per cent of workers live and work in the same Local Government Area or the one next door. (See the Department of Infrastructure’s Transport Demand Information Atlas for Victoria 2008 Table 7).

Many of these trips are to activity centres - the ‘cities within the city’ such as shopping centres, industrial and office parks, universities and hospital precincts. Many new activity centres aren’t on a train or tram line and some have very poor public transport.

Obviously Melbourne’s Central Business District is one of the biggest activity centres.

One third of all jobs in Melbourne are in the Melbourne CBD plus its adjoining council areas, such as Yarra, Port Phillip and Maribyrnong.

Half our jobs are in the inner part of the city, roughly the Zone 1 travelcard zone, depite this being only about twenty percent of Melbourne’s total area.

To look at it another way, trips to and from the top 200 activity centres are about forty percent of all travel in Melbourne.

This picture shows where some of the activity centres are, with the size of the circle indicating how big the centre is, in terms of jobs, retail floor space etc

The state government’s Melbourne 2030 policy was supposed to be all about refocussing development on activity centres. The problem is, it didn’t deliver the public transport needed to make those activity centres work. Instead they are becoming congested, less pleasant places to be and new development is often being resisted.

To make this idea work, we need to refocus our transport system around the ‘cities within the city’. Fast, frequent public transport routes need to radiate into these centres.

Frequency is important because it means less waiting time, effectively shortening your journey. This is especially important when you have to change from one transport mode to another to get to where you are going. Coordinated timetables are important, but when the service is frequent enough, you won’t need a timetable, you’ll just get off the train knowing the bus will be along in a few minutes!

As a rule of thumb, we will need ten minute frequency for trams, buses and trains on all lines. Trams, trains and buses need to run all night.

Further information.

The public transport map for your area. What are the obvious gaps in the network? Even where the network coverage looks good, how often does it run? Does it run into the evenings and weekends, at the times when you might want to go to a restaurant strip, or the beach?

A detailed report on Melbourne’s Activity Centres