On a good day, Ramy Najmeddine's weekday commute starts with a 20-minute wait just to get out of his housing estate in Melbourne's outer north.
That's frustrating enough — but once he's made it onto Donnybrook Road, he simply joins another queue.
Sometimes, it's so bad he has to wait for more than an hour to get from there onto the highway, where he joins a daily traffic jam of cars from neighbouring developments.
It's a frustration that's common across Melbourne's booming outer suburbs, where experts say growth is far outpacing infrastructure, especially when it comes to transport.
Pollsters say voters in the outer suburbs feel neglected because of a lack of services, an issue that may cost votes at this month's election.
Mr Najmeddine lives in Kalkallo, a suburb just off the Hume Freeway that was home to just 105 people in the 2016 census.
The population ballooned to 6,466 in 2021.
His estate, Cloverton, is home to more than 2,000 residents, and has one road in and out.
Construction on a second road started this week, and is due to be finished in mid-2024.
Locals say recently installed traffic lights to allow traffic on to Donnybrook Road do help, sometimes, and some have welcomed a promised slip lane, but many say the real issue is the traffic on Donnybrook Road itself.
Mr Najmeddine said the daily traffic gave him — and other residents — plenty of time to think.
"Sometimes you do get thoughts of, 'did I make the right move buying here?'" he said.
"That does come across sometimes, because there's more frustration than there is ease when it comes to taking kids to school, driving to work, all the peak-hour stuff that people are doing in the estate — it is quite frustrating."
He said he liked the neighbourhood, but everyone was frustrated by the lack of services, including walking paths, shops, connections to the train station, and especially the traffic.
"I can't imagine for the life of me if there was an emergency that was to happen and an ambulance needs to come in and come out," he said.
His wife, Athirah Basalamah, allows at least 45 minutes to take their daughter Madinah to school in Donnybrook, which is just 3 kilometres away.
"The quickest I can do is half an hour, but it took up to an hour and a half one day," she said.
She said the traffic affected her every day. She makes sure she does all the shopping during the school run, to avoid unnecessary trips.
Residents are also frustrated at a lack of access to public transport.
The only bus comes every half hour — even at peak times — and does not service the back of the estate, meaning some residents have to walk half an hour to get to the closest stop.
Donnybrook train station is just across the Merri Creek, but there is no pedestrian access, so most people drive there.
Roads not keeping up with 'phenomenal' growth in outer suburbs
RMIT's Centre for Urban Research associate professor Andrew Butt said those experiences were pretty typical for the booming outer suburbs, particularly in the north and west.
"The growth in those places has been phenomenal — the infrastructure in those places simply is not keeping up," he said.
He said the outer suburbs were home to Victoria's busiest V/Line train stations, including Tarneit and Wyndham Vale in the west, and Donnybrook and Wallan in the north.
Last month, the government announced $200 million for the next stage of planning a new train station at Truganina, and a new station for Tarneit West, to be built by 2026.
Mr Butt said those suburbs needed metropolitan train services.
"Many of these suburbs are still running on V/Line services that were built and timetabled for peri-urban communities, not for new growing suburbs," he said.
He said the poor standard of public transport was pushing people into cars, and frustrating voters across the outer suburbs.
"That legacy of promise and undelivered promise, dotted lines on maps for new infrastructure, really right now is hitting its limits, it's hitting the point where people in these suburbs are really under stress," he said.
Housing estate starts its own bus service
Down the road from Donnybrook, Merrifield housing estate faced similar transport issues when it was first built in 2015.
There were no buses in the area and its developer MAB Corporations heard residents were finding it difficult to get around.
"There was no clear plan or time frame for the government to deliver a service," MAB's general manager of communities Matthew Planner said.
As a solution, the company started its own private bus services, taking Merrifield residents from the estate to nearby shops and trains.
"We wanted to bridge the gap where we could," Mr Planner said.
"It was about trying to open up the possibilities in terms of the destinations they could get to."
While it may have been a solution for Merrifield residents, those keeping a close eye on Melbourne's growth zones said key transport infrastructure in new developments shouldn't be left to chance.
The National Growth Areas Alliance's chief executive Bronwen Clark said governments had a greater role to play.
"The key solution is for the state government to plan and deliver public transport options as people move into new suburbs," Ms Clark said.
"We just can't have people and families moving in and waiting 10 years for the first bus."
Some bridging the transport gap themselves
In Melbourne's west, Manjit Singh's community was facing a similar problem.
For some Sikh worshippers, the nearest bus stop to the Khalsa Shaouni temple at Plumpton in Melbourne's outer west was a 40-minute walk.
Mr Singh, a temple leader and volunteer, said a private bus service was the only way to ensure elderly residents were able to socialise and join the community.
"The elderly won't be able to make it here unless we get people to go in their own cars to pick them up," Mr Singh said.
"If there is a bus service, they can come to the temple, they can help out, they can socialise, they can get to meet old friends as well."
Land transport disadvantage expert, Associate Professor Janet Stanley, said isolation was a key issue communities faced without better bus networks.
"Without the access, there's an increase in exclusion," Professor Stanley said.
"People who are excluded from society aren't doing well."
Professor Stanley said expanding bus services in the outer suburbs would reduce the disadvantage caused by poor transport connections.
"It gives opportunities for people to meet other people, to be part of your community, to actually get to work," she said.
"The answer is to have regular 20 minute bus service around neighbourhood areas.
"People can just go to a bus stop and know that a bus will come very soon and they know they can get home again."
Not too far from the temple in Melton South, the state government does run an on-demand bus service called FlexiRide.
It also operates in Tarneit North, Woodend, Croydon, Lilydale, Mooroolbark, Rowville and Rosebud.
The bus is booked through an app and allows people to get picked up from anywhere within a designated area and transported to a nearby hub such as shops, train stations and schools.
In Melton South alone, it transports around 700 people a week — but the temple is just outside the designated pick-up area.
While Mr Singh's community will continue to use a private bus to bridge the gap, he wants to see the government expand the service to his community.
"I think it would be really good for the community overall, not just people coming to the temple," he said.
"It's about helping people get around a bit more."
