Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Public transport

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (18:05): (1117) My adjournment is for the Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the action that I seek is to reform Melbourne’s public transport network with more frequent services that will get more people on board. Our car-centric transport system is one of our biggest sources of climate pollution, and what is more, cars are one of the biggest regular expenses for households, costing more than $20,000 a year on average to run and maintain. Without better bus and train services in our suburbs and more safe paths for walking, rolling and riding, people are stuck using cars for many trips that do not actually need to be performed. The Climate Council’s new report Race to the Top: Australia’s Clean Energy Momentum shows Melbourne is well behind Sydney on the share of travel using public transport. New South Wales got Climate Council’s gold medal for shared transport, with 13.1 per cent of trips in Sydney by train, tram or bus, while we were a distant second, with 8.5 per cent. We often hear excuses for why Melbourne cannot have a world-class public transport network like other great cities of the world, with people saying we are not London or we are not Amsterdam. But Sydney is a comparable-sized city within our own country, and they are mopping the floor with us – a crying shame.

Transport is the biggest contributor to climate change pollution after energy. Passenger transport is dominated by cars, with little investment in shared and active transport. Only around 4 per cent of passenger trips are by walking or bike riding. Victorians should be able to enjoy the benefits of cheaper, cleaner public transport and by doing so slash the cost of living and climate pollution at the same time. We know building more roads to address car traffic congestion simply increases the number of cars on the road, as traffic fills the available road space and increases climate pollution. It is possible to change this. We have the infrastructure to run more trains more often in the middle of the day, in the evenings and on weekends, when currently wait times can be as long as 40 minutes on many lines. We can reform our bus networks, creating direct and frequent routes that connect people to their destinations quickly. We need to do better. We should be going for gold, creating a world-class network that can beat our neighbours to the north and doing what is right for our health, our household costs, our communities and our planet.