In Melbourne we do this thing where we let developers build suburbs with zero infrastructure, refuse to put buses or other public transport in when asked because it’s “not viable”, then a decade later we will put a bus route in, but then bitch and whinge because nobody’s catching it. Then maybe 5 or 6 decades after that, we’ll order a feasibility study to see if we should build a train station there, then it’ll be deemed to expensive and we’ll wait another century before deciding to spend insanely high amounts of money on either building an underground station, or acquiring a shit ton of land.
If somebody would use their damn brains and realise it is cheaper and easier to at the very least plan for and reserve land in these new developments for public transport, and these new suburbs would stop being opened without bus stops, supermarkets, and GP clinics, we’d all be better off…
@Baku @ajsadauskas we could learn some things from China who are willing to build metro stations in the middle of overgrown fields they know will be developed in the coming years
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/chongqing-china-metro-station-nowhere/index.html
I think metro stations are a bit overkill, especially for Australia’s cities. I’d settle for the government releasing solid plans for train lines in new areas, and developers being required to cede the land for them while building out new suburbs. As well as increasing the taxes on those developers profits, directly into a fund to pay for the line to be built.
we should stop posting one off things as examples of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. it just makes things that are actually good seem impossible to achieve.
Sounds like a standard government planning process to me. :(
It’s amazing how much impact the privatisation of land development has, there are missed opportunities across the environmental and sustainablity fronts.
try 2 hours door to door. thank f for working from home!
Around 12-13 years ago, I had to fly from Melbourne to Sydney to meet with a customer. One of my colleagues who lived in Sydney was also going to the meeting. We left home at the same time. I beat him to the customer!
I was driven to/from the respective airports, he was on trains. But still - it was a bit ridiculous that I got there first.
Worst i had it was 1.5 hrs one way. Hated it.
That’s my life now :/
I can almost get to work on the bus in 30 minutes, but that bus in-turn only comes every 30 minutes. So I have to time it fairly well to get the bus as it comes. If I time it just right, it’s about 33-34 minutes to work.
Or, I can leave whenever I wish and cycle in 25 minutes; which is what I do whenever it isn’t raining.
Related: I’ve heard NIMBYs bringing up that “the bus is faster (may have a quicker journey time in certain conditions)” and because of this, stuff like light rail and quality BRT is a waste of time. It certainly isn’t faster if you have to wait for >30 min for it though because mixed traffic is an awful environment for generating and maintaining high frequencies and patronage and thus good investment. Our value assessment frameworks need work to say the least
Anyone who uses the word “fast” about busses clearly doesn’t regularly use them.
Hear, hear! It’s ludicrous indeed, and so obviously bad faith. Give me a dedicated way, high frequencies and predictable service over hypothetical “speed” any day.
What even are those bar charts meant to represent? Absolute number of people? That’d be a rather small percentage represented. Why do we even get a graph in absolute numbers when percentage is what we’re after?. When will journalists learn fucking graphs for once?!
The longest commute I’ve ever had was two days, but that was while doing offshore rotation, so I’m not sure if it counts.
The longest I’ve had for a “normal” job was 11 minutes and 16 seconds. I know it that accurately because I usually started this one particular song as soon as I got into my car, and it finished when I pulled into the parking lot at work. Dream Theater- Stream of Consciousness.
German here. I rarely had less than half an hour of a commute but that’s in part because I find that time acceptable. I typically choose my mode of transportation to hit half an hour, whether that’s public transit, a bike, or even walking.
Could I save ten minutes by getting a car or motorbike? Sure, but the cost far outweighs the benefits. Besides, I like to ride my bike and mostly work from home anyway.
During school holidays, my commute is around 25 minutes each way.
Outside of school holidays, my commute is around 40 minutes each way.
How do kids who start school at 9:00am ruin my commute at 6:30am?
I can’t tell if this is a sarcastic comment, but just in case it isn’t: Because during holidays, a noticeable enough percentage of the people who join your commute at 6:30am, have decided to not go to work that day and will instead enjoy a day with their offspring.
It’s also a good time to remind everyone that the train however, if an option, will be equally fast regardless of school holiday periods.
Not only that but those parents do a double commute. School drop off and work commute. Before school care starts at 7am at my sons school. I start at 7:45 so hes dropped before 7:30.
I don’t know, but I used to commute about an hour and a half to get to my first high school. I went by public transport though. It was only a 20 minute drive, too, which really made it suck
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The average Australian worker spends more than an hour a day stuck in rush-hour traffic, fighting for a seat on the bus or trying to zone out on the train.
Dr Both explained there were solutions to ease the traffic and add more public transport in newly built suburbs in some of the country’s growth areas.
He added that due to the heavy reliance on car usage and a lack of public transport options in some of these newly built outer suburbs, delays in getting to work were inevitable.
Experts have said Australia should look at cities that have a comparable size with similar levels of urban sprawl of large capitals including Melbourne and Sydney.
“In smaller cities and countries, they have much more [stricter] sort of planning schemes, which means they heavily monitor due to lack of available land,” he said.
He believes a bigger problem for increased commuter times, especially in some of the larger capital cities, is unchecked growth in some outer-suburban communities.
The original article contains 913 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
