Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (09:58): A resident of my electorate recently asked the Greens to advocate for better bus services to the airport, but why would they ask for this when we already have the outrageously expensive SkyBus service and one day, if we are good, maybe we will even have a train? Well, if you live north of the city, first you have to waste time travelling away from the airport to get to Southern Cross Station. Then when you get there you have got to turn around and finally head to the airport. If you live anywhere in the inner north, you are already halfway to the airport, but you can only take advantage of that by using a private car or taxi. Most of the buses running east–west in the inner north – such as, say, the 506 in my electorate and several others – do not run in the evenings or on Sundays. If they did, we could catch a bus across to the Craigieburn line, take the train to the Broadmeadows station and then take the 901 bus to the airport. A wonderful, low-cost opportunity to drastically improve transport to the airport and many other destinations and cut car traffic would be to increase the frequency and hours of operation of the bus services that join the train lines. At the very least we should run the 506 bus on Sundays and later into the evening. Labor has got a great opportunity to improve bus services in the north of Melbourne rather than to neglect them.