Finance manager Shweta Bhatti lives less than two kilometres from Mernda train station, which, when it opened in 2018, plugged the residents of one of Melbourne’s fastest growing suburbs directly into the city’s heavy rail network for the first time.Even on a recent family trip into the CBD, Bhatti and her husband weighed up the cost of myki fares and time spent travelling by train against the time and cost of driving and preferred the latter.
The 89 per cent figure is based on the council’s household surveys, which differ from census data but show the same entrenched pattern of car reliance over many years.Census data shows that in 2011, when the rail line terminated at Epping station, 8.9 per cent of Whittlesea’s residents travelled to work by public transport and 74.8 per cent travelled by car.
This will require reorienting housing development away from the sprawling and poorly serviced greenfield estates where public transport is “non-existent or inadequate”, as the plan puts it, and into central parts of the municipality.It will also require reform of the bus network, given “bus travel is often uncompetitive with car travel on journey times”.
Jago Dodson, professor of urban policy at RMIT University, said that turbocharging the frequency and coverage of the bus network was the key to improving public transport usage in the outer suburbs. Whittlesea is not the only car-dependent outer suburban council searching for ways to promote other modes of travel. Neighbouring Nillumbik shire, which is centred around Eltham and Diamond Creek, released its own transport strategy this week.