Mornington peninsula misses out in bus service - a review of the announcementVictorian Public Transport Minister, Lyn Kosky, has announced a tokenistic $1 million upgrade of route bus services on the Mornington Peninsula and in Frankston as part of the $38 billion Victorian Transport Plan. Author: Ian Hundley - 7 January 2010 This is the Peninsula’s and Frankston’s share of the $500 million the government has said it will spend on upgrading bus services in the whole of Melbourne over a ten year period. Even more significantly the government’s Victorian Transport Plan also includes a $750 million spend to construct the Peninsula Link freeway between Carrum Downs and Dromana which will further accelerate forced car ownership and eat further into the household budgets of Peninsula residents. In other words, these spending priorities show that for every single dollar the Victorian government has promised to spend on bus services on the Peninsula and Frankston it will spend $750 on one freeway in the area and $38 thousand on transport elsewhere in Melbourne. The bus review report and government responseThe bus changes followed a report by Connell Wagner, a private consultant, who in association with Indec Consulting and McCormick Rankin Cagney, was commissioned in 2007 by the Department of Transport to review route bus services in Frankston and on the Peninsula. It is one of 16 such reviews of Melbourne’s route bus services commenced by the Victorian government since 2006. The report found that only 3 of the 25 services reviewed meet the Department of Transport’s notional minimum service standard for frequency of service (i.e. a minimum 60 minute headway). The report also found that none of the services meet the minimum service standard for span of hours of service (i.e. services between 6 am and 9 pm on weekdays, between 8 am and 9 pm on Saturdays and between 9 am and 9 pm on Sundays. Of the eight bus services on the Peninsula, one of them does not run at all on weekends and four run from Monday to Saturday but not on Sundays. Two of the six service upgrades announced by the Minister on 19 November are for the Peninsula; the other four are for services in Frankston. The Peninsula gets a new service from Rye to St Andrews Beach and a permanent service between Rosebud and Chisholm TAFE. However, the latter is not really an additional service as it replaces an existing shuttle service which is apparently funded by the TAFE even though it is listed on the MetLink website. Is it possible to interpret these mediocre changes to bus services on the Peninsula as little more than a marketing effort to create the impression for Peninsula residents that the government has a balanced transport policy? But the figures show otherwise. One dollar for upgrading substandard bus services on the Peninsula and in Frankston for every $750 to be spent on just one new freeway is reflective of a seriously unbalanced approach to transport on the Peninsula. The Frankston/ Mornington Peninsula Bus Review and contemporary realityThe government said that the bus review has been based on a detailed understanding of the current demographic and socio-economic conditions in the bus review area. (1) As I will explain below this is a claim that is very difficult to sustain. There is little that is contained in the Connell Wagner report that demonstrates sufficient grasp of prevailing demographic and socio-economic conditions. Whilst the report identified self-evident weaknesses in the provision of bus services in Frankston and on the Mornington Peninsula there are significant omissions that render the report a relatively useless tool for any government that had a genuine commitment to upgrading services in these areas. These omissions relate to the:
Each of these issues will be discussed in turn below with particular reference to the public transport situation on the Mornington Peninsula. The currency of the data in the consultant reportFirstly, in describing the social demographics of the Mornington Peninsula and Frankston the consultants relied heavily upon the 2001 Census data. However, their report was released at the end of 2009 and the 2006 Census data had by then been available for a considerable time. Other more contemporary data is now available as well. Thus, much of the data upon which the report is based is well out of date. In fact, even though the report is dated and was released by the government in November 2009 it appears to have been completed some time ago. The commentary below will draw on data from the 1996, 2001 and 2006 census, as well as more recent data from other sources. Car ownership and public transportSecondly, the report observes that car ownership is relatively high and is the prominent mode of transport in the Review Area. 2 As the matter is not explored in any detail in the report it would be easy to conclude from this that higher rates of car ownership in some way satisfies local residents transport needs, thus relieving the government from the responsibility of providing more accessible public transport. However, in locations such as the Mornington Peninsula where there is so little public transport, people are compelled to drive a car whether they prefer to or not. This is reflected in well-established analysis that generally shows that locations that are public transport poor have relatively greater rates of car ownership than locations that are public transport rich. Table 1 below shows the rate of car ownership by residents of Mornington Shire, Frankston City, Rosebud on Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne City. Residents of Melbourne City have a much lower rate of car ownership than residents of the Mornington Peninsula or Frankston. This is due to the fact that the inner city residents do not need a car because of superior access to places of employment, shopping and other common destinations by public transport, walking or cycling. In many cases, these residents are able to make the practical choice to not own a car at all. Thus, 22.7% of the households of Melbourne do not have a car, whereas all but 1.7% of the households of Mornington Shire have one or more motor cars. Not being car dependent has a number of advantages for Melbourne residents, not the least being it increases discretionary household income as it relieves them of the fixed and variable costs of car ownership.
Table 1: Comparative car ownership, Mornington Shire, Frankston City, Rosebud and Melbourne City However, Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula is an interesting case. As can be seen from Table 1 a relatively large proportion of households have no car or one car, more akin to Melbourne City than to the City of Frankston or the Shire of Mornington as a whole. However, this is not because Rosebud residents have access to good public transport. On the contrary, just like the rest of the Peninsula, Rosebud suffers significant transport deprivation, with no-one having access to reasonable quality public transport. It is more likely that low income and driving disability are the major reasons for lower car ownership in Rosebud. Whilst the Mornington Peninsula will never experience the reduction in car ownership and the greater public transport use which typifies Melbourne City, principally because of significantly greater population dispersion, there is no doubt it could be significantly improved under more effective state government policy settings than those that currently prevail. Travel to work Thirdly, the consultants make the observation that public transport (and particularly buses) are not readily used as a form of transport to work on the Mornington Peninsula. They make little connection with the fact that there is relatively little public transport available that suits the requirements of workers. In fact, according to the Census data for 1996, 2001 and 2006 route buses do not make any sort of a contribution at all. A comparison of these data in Table 2 below show how car dependent the Mornington Peninsula has become in recent years.
Table 2: Single mode journeys to work by residents of Mornington Peninsula, 1996, 2001, 2006 Table 2 shows single mode travel to work by residents of the Mornington Peninsula on each of the last three census days, 1996-2006. Driving a car is by far and away the most common means of getting to work for Peninsula residents. In fact so few Peninsula residents travel to work by walking, bus, train or bicycle that these modes virtually do not register. In 2006, only 342 out of 45,549 people caught the bus to work, a miniscule 0.75% of all journeys to work. It is significant that within the space of ten years, 1996 to 2006, that all work journeys have grown from 34,608 to 45,549 per day, which is an increase of over 30%. With the present and likely modal mix of work journeys, and given the current Victorian government policy approach, we appear to be confronted by the alarming prospect of even greater car dependency on the Peninsula in future. The 10,000 or so extra work journeys by car each day in just a decade provides a measure of the growing pressure for increased road space on the Peninsula. In fact, under the current official mind set, the ability of the proposed Peninsula Link to carry this traffic is likely to be projected by the government as both a justification for the project, and a “performance measure.” Just how badly the Peninsula ranks for non-car travel to work compared with the rest of Melbourne is highlighted by comparing the Department of Transport’s recent VISTA 2007 survey results and the 2006 Census data. VISTA 07 is a large sample survey of travel behaviour by households in Melbourne and regional cities conducted in 2007 and 2008. Table 3, below, shows the percentage of work travellers by travel mode for the inner city and inner, middle and outer suburban Melbourne.
Table 3: Modal share for travel to and from work, Melbourne As previously observed from the 2006 Census data shown in Table 2, 342 Peninsula residents travelled to work by bus and 304 by train. Thus about 1.4% of all work journeys by Peninsula residents were made by these two forms of public transport. This compares most unfavourably with outer suburban Melbourne as a whole, as reflected in the VISTA 07 results, which saw 10.2% of all work journeys made by public transport. Given that outer suburban Melbourne as a whole is served so poorly with public transport it is clear how parlous the situation on the Peninsula has been allowed to become. Economic and social disadvantageFourthly, the consultants conclude that Mornington Peninsula has a lower level of transport disadvantage when compared to Frankston, which they say is reflective of the more affluent make up of residences/ households in the Shire of Mornington Peninsula. This is something of an oversimplification. Whilst there are pockets of households with very high wealth on the Peninsula, it is also the case that there are significant areas of low wealth and income and concentrations of households in poverty. As intimated above, Rosebud is one such area. A recent report 3 by Graham Currie from the Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University, which analysed public transport need and supply across Melbourne concluded that areas of the Mornington Peninsula ranked very high for transport need and very low on transport supply. The report, which examined each of the 5839 census collectors districts (CCD’s) in Melbourne, showed overall the gap between service provision and social need is greatest in the outer suburbs. More specifically it was found that 42 of the 100 CCD’s with the highest ranked composite transport need indicator are on the Mornington Peninsula. All but two of these were ranked in the worst or second worst categories for transport supply. The gap is substantial in the City of Frankston too, which recorded five of the 100 top ranked CCD’s for transport need. A 2008 report by two Griffith University scholars, Unsettling Suburbia, also found that residents of the Mornington Peninsula are either vulnerable or very vulnerable to mortgage, petrol and inflation risks.4 Current pressures in these areas may currently be relatively low, but they will most assuredly increase. Far from being a source of complacency, measured social disadvantage on the Peninsula should be a stimulus for major reform of the route bus system to provide much greater access to services for local residents. Visitors to the Peninsula and public transport requirementsFinally, there is a significant transport requirement in key parts of the Peninsula for short-term visitors, generally associated with tourist and holiday activity. It constitutes a significant proportion of the passenger transport task on the Peninsula but went largely unremarked by the consultants. Much less did the Minister for Public Transport recognise it in her recent announcement of minor bus service changes for the Peninsula. It is interesting that in recently announcing the continuation of a summer bus service on the Great Ocean Road, the Minister did recognise the importance of public transport in Lorne and surrounding holiday destinations. The requirement is significantly greater on the Mornington Peninsula, but regrettably remains unrecognised by the government. Because public transport on the Peninsula is so poor the corporate organisers of a polo event at the Nepean National Park in early January 2009 had to organise their own scheduled bus service from Rosebud to ferry patrons to the park because the regular service was not up to the task. Ironically, the same company that is contracted to provide the regular route bus services on the Peninsula for the government also provided this ad hoc service. These short-term travel requirements have never been factored into the Victorian government’s transport policy for the provision of public transport on the Peninsula. The Mornington Peninsula Shire has variously estimated that the Peninsula attracts four to five million tourists annually and that tourism generates four million day trips each year. 5 Tourism is the largest single industry and a large employer on the Peninsula. To put the significance of this travel requirement into perspective, four million day trips per annum is equivalent to about 88 days of the 45,000 daily work related trips that Peninsula residents take each year. It is evident that much of this short-term travel also occurs on weekends, when bus services on the Peninsula are either infrequent or non-existent on many routes. The VISTA 07 survey by the Department of Transport showed that 70.5% of weekday travel to or within the Peninsula was undertaken by Peninsula residents compared with 59.7% of weekend trips. This travel pattern is different from the inner suburbs where typically a similar proportion of travel is taken by local and non-local residents in the relevant municipality both on weekdays and on weekends. Trip transference to public transportDespite the fact that public transport services on the Mornington Peninsula are poor it appears that patronage has recently increased significantly. Between 2006-07 and 2007-08 total ticket validations on eight bus routes serving the Peninsula increased by 14.1%, from 1,315,178 to 1,501,173. This is well above the growth in bus usage for the Melbourne metropolitan area as a whole. Whilst bus travel remains a very small proportion of all trips made by Peninsula residents, this growth indicates that residents are seeking out public transport choices in what are the most unpropitious of circumstances. In fact, the scope to effect trip transfers away from the private motor vehicle on the Peninsula is significant. This should be a key objective in improving bus services there. Major target groups include:
Also it may well be found that as the take up of public transport increases, there is a more than proportionate decrease in car passenger kilometres due to such factors as trip chaining, and the foregoing of the extra car by many households. This is the benefit of the phenomenon of transit leverage, the more than proportionate decrease in car usage for any unit increase in public transport usage. The strategic transport modelling for Peninsula Link postulated up to 59,000 vehicles per day on Moorooduc Highway in the absence of the freeway or some other remedy for projected road congestion. Unfortunately no worthwhile government effort is being made to reduce car usage to the point where car dependency is substantially reduced. This projection anticipates its continued growth. Where to now?Peninsula residents, in particular, have a right to feel let down by the outcome of the bus review - they have been. They share the lot of all residents of the outer suburbs of Melbourne in suffering from sub-standard public transport. But the Mornington Peninsula must be the worst off in the light of the mediocre changes announced recently by the Minister for Public Transport. Coupled with planned freeway development, it promises to accelerate the car dependency that now threatens as the Peninsula’s fate. However, concerned Peninsula residents need to take some of the responsibility for this state of affairs for having not organised against the transport and town planning disaster that has been methodically laid out for them over decades by successive Victorian governments acting as compliant agents of the roads lobby. I have previously characterised the Peninsula as a place where the population is sidelined from the decisions that affect them most. By and large they are observers of their fate, rather than effective agents in their own destiny. The fact that many of the wards remained uncontested at the 2008 Mornington Peninsula Shire election is one measure of this malaise in the local body politic. The fact that the Peninsula includes so many absentee property owners only with a narrow interest in long distance speedy access to their holiday home assists in skewing Council priorities away from issues of local transport access. It also explains why the Shire took little more than a passing interest in the recent bus review. Another issue is the marginalisation of local party political representation and activity in the area. The local representatives tug the forelock in deference to the road lobby, whilst feigning concern about its worst excesses. Local organisation is inert, largely waiting to be presented as a respectable face on election day. This is not so dissimilar from Melbourne as a whole, but Peninsula residents have much to lose as a consequence of this state of political torpor. Groups with single environmental causes have not sufficiently recognised that they have a larger single common cause centred on achieving sustainable development and integrated transport. The Mornington Peninsula Shire declares in favour of 70% of the municipality being green wedge. But it won’t be worth much if the Peninsula is to be criss-crossed by freeways zeroing in on gated golfing communities. And there is more in the pipeline, starting with the freeway to Rye. If the road reservation is there the one trick pony, VicRoads, or its propagandistically titled confrere, the Linking Melbourne Authority, will build it in response to their formula for “solving” increased traffic congestion. Footnotes
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