UN 216: Industrial land plan release ignores PT access

 

Imagine a land use plan based on 100 000 new jobs by 2035 but no provision or mention of public transport.

Is this something out of California in 1965? 

No, it's what passes for Victorian land use planning for jobs in 2025. 

Last Sunday on the weekend before the Cup Day public holiday the Victorian state government released a 10 year plan for industrial land. 

It proposed the release of 5800 hectares that would fit up to 100 000 jobs. 

I looked at it to see what it said about public transport access to jobs.

I searched various relevant terms like buses. 

Nothing. 

Public transport access and services is not mentioned once as a consideration for industrial land. 

The plan is apparently the work of the Department of Transport and Planning.

The amalgamated department has a name that implies there is some sort of coordination.

But it doesn't look like any of this happened.

DTP has internal bus and rail planning teams that could have advised on the best locations for PT connectivity. But with zero mention of public transport access it doesn't look like they had input into this plan. This is despite 'integrated planning' being a rationale for merging the transport and planning portfolios.  

Consequences

A 2019 parliamentary inquiry into disadvantaged jobseekers found that transport to commerical and industrial areas was a major issue that held people back. 

Without considering public transport access this land release plan risks being a recipe for 'more of the same' with regards to outer suburban traffic gridlock, few transport choices, high commuting costs and social exclusion. 

We will get more Laverton Norths, Dandenong Souths and Campbellfields with zero or poor public transport connectivity to surrounding suburbs. Except they may be even bigger, less permeable and less accessible. 

Any outer suburbs recruitment agency or transport campaigner knows that transport to industrial area jobs frequently comes up. There are particularly issues with getting apprentices below driving age.

It's relevant for welfare agencies too - charities, food banks and op shops such as Savers and Salvos have increasingly deserted rail-based suburban centres like Ringwood, Frankston and Dandenong in favour of large industrial area locations, typically with inferior public transport.

Today's electorate officers will be tomorrow's politicians. They will be deluged in correspondence asking why there isn't public transport to industrial job areas. 

Including ones that may be in this plan but are perpetually condemned by bad location or geometry that makes efficient public transport access difficult or expensive. If current ministers want to do their proteges a favour they wouldn't be approving planning approaches that just create future problems that can't be fixed without major infrastructure realignments or private property resumptions. 

PT planning for industrial areas

Obviously planning considerations for industrial areas are different to what you might do for an inner suburb like Brunswick or Northcote. Land parcels are bigger and roads need to be wider. 

But you can still avoid the worst mistakes that make a location basically inaccessible. For instance industrial areas should never be on a 'peninsula' or hemmed in between railways, creeks and freeways such that there is access from one direction only. Instead access should be from multiple directions involving regular roads that can support bus stops (as opposed to freeways that cannot). 

An industrial location should preferably be part way between strong termini, destinations and residential catchments. If the industrial area is 'on the way' then direct routes through them become much more viable as they attract some non-industrial patronage and in some cases connect parallel rail lines. Such routes can support useful all day/all week service rather than be infrequent industrial routes with limited peak only service. 

Internally there should be permeable road grids rather than long culs-de-sac for efficient and direct access for walkers and cyclists. Roads should have dual use paths along them on both sides. Shade trees are highly desirable, lessen heat islands and contribute to local biodiversity. All main intersections should be signalised with pedestrian phases.

Locating bus stops near intersections maximises access. Mid-block bus stops on fast roads should have central pedestrian refuges as a minimum to make access earlier. And large roundabouts should be eliminated in favour of signalised intersections (or better still not built at all) to ensure safe predictable wait times for walkers, cyclists and motorists (from side roads).  

Conclusion

Public transport in industrial areas doesn't get the attention it deserves despite the economic and social participation benefits it brings. 

Given the number of jobs the government envisages for its industrial land releases, public transport access should be a major criteria to determine suitability and release sequencing. 

Unfortunately it would appear that the land release plan that got released on Sunday ignored public transport access.

This risks creating problems for the future. Notably a proliferation of remote industrial estates that are impossible to efficiently serve by public transport even if the will to do so exists. 

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A history of Melbourne's bus route numbering

Melbourne's current three digit bus route numbering system started in 1971 when all bus routes got renumbered. The first digit reflects the area or operator with the next two a unique identifier. 

Learn more here:  

There's quite a few other videos on the Melbourne on Transit YouTube channel so watch them too and subscribe. 

2005 flashback: No new rail extensions

TWENTY YEARS AGO today The Age reported that the government planned no major train or tram extensions during the next 15 to 20 years. The first two paragraphs of that article is below.  

The article went on to say that the government's interest was building core capacity through improved signalling and extra track. And that its main metropolitan rail project was a third track to Dandenong (which never got built). Back then time-lines for infrastructure were long - the third track would have a working group report by 2007, a tender initiated in 2008 and completion in 2011. 

In 2005 the state government was interested in regional rather than metropolitan rail. Promises for the latter made in 1999 were largely not delivered with spending instead going towards picking up the pieces from the first version of rail franchising which had collapsed.

However patronage was surging and reliability had been in free-fall since late 2003. The Bracks - Brumby government, which initially thought it could outsource blame to private operator Connex, got kicked out in 2010 before benefits from the improvements it finally funded from about 2008 kicked in. 

We did end up getting some new rail within 20 years with the South Morang extension opening in 2012 and the Regional Rail Link in 2015. However his prophesy regarding tram extensions proved largely correct, with trams very much the 'stagnant mode' apart from minor extensions in Docklands. 

Jump forward to the current time and Betts' successor, DTP Secretary Jeroen Weimar, has downplayed the possibility that we'll see rail electrification to Melton and Wyndham Vale any time soon in a speech given yesterday to the WoMEDA Summit.