Areas across Melbourne are completely cut off from public transport options, with other parts of the city only getting sporadic service, analysis has revealed. Peter Parker, a public transport expert, has analysed bus routes across the city and says the poor quality of services on the outer fringe and large swaths of the north and west are “entrenching inequality”.
“Unfortunately, areas for the cheapest housing are often those with the worst transport and also the worst access to jobs,” he said.
“Public transport services generally reinforce rather than help those inequalities.”
In 2021 the Victorian government released its bus plan to get services running more frequently but advocates argue little has been done to improve the system, which they say is designed for CBD workers living on tram and train lines.
Parker points to Dandenong, Hume and St Albans, which have some of the highest rates of poverty in the state according to the Victorian Council of Social Service, as well as poorly serviced bus routes. Neither route 800, which runs through Springvale, Noble Park and Dandenong, nor the 536, which partially runs through Fawkner, in Hume, operate on Sundays, he says.
“Areas like Tarneit and Craigieburn are densely populated and very multicultural, with a lot of new migrants,” he said.
“But again, limited operating hours mean their buses finish around 9pm. This compares to eastern suburbs like Doncaster and Box Hill, where main routes keep running until midnight.”
Bus routes in Campbellfield, which is just 16km from Melbourne’s CBD in the Hume council, are also poorly serviced, he said.
“There’s little within walking distance, and the buses finish at 1pm on a Saturday, with nothing on Sundays. Weekday operating hours are also very short.”
Parker said the state government had invested in huge infrastructure projects but had not always linked the bus services up, so the wait times can be long and the schedule is unreliable.
“Southland station [in Cheltenham] is a very good example of that. There are no local buses that actually go near the station,” he said.
The Victorian government has defended the bus routes, saying that since 2014, it has invested more than $550m in new and improved bus services.
“More than 200 bus routes have either been improved or added to Victoria’s bus network since the launch of Victoria’s bus plan in July 2021, adding thousands more services to the network,” a spokesperson from the Department of Transport and Planning said.
But in some cases, suburbs have been built faster than public transport infrastructure – leaving residents in new areas along the city fringes with no choice but to drive.
Pawan is a single mum who lives in Mount Atkinson, about 23km north-west of Melbourne’s CBD. No trains go to the area, and the closest bus route is 4km away from her home.
“That bus doesn’t connect to the shops, it’s not useful,” she says.
Pawan moved to the area because houses were more affordable, but with two children who go to two different schools, she is spending roughly $200 a week on petrol.
“Even the nearest shopping centre is about 10 to 15 minutes’ drive to even … pick up a bottle of milk,” Pawan said.
“I just want the government to pay attention and look at the urgent needs of the communities.”
Elyse Cunningham, who is advocating for better public transport in the west of the city, says “the further out you go, the worse it gets”.
She said the most poorly serviced areas in the west were Wyndham, Brimbank, Hobsons Bay and Melton, where buses often did not come for 50 minutes and journeys could take “four times longer” than car rides.
Cunningham says they are asking for a “transformation” of the entire network, where buses run on arterial roads with a 10-minute frequency – with the aim “to get people where they want to go, get them there on time and be an appealing mode of transport that people are actually going to want to take”.
