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Metropolitan Transport Forum, 1 May 2019

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Introduction The Metropolitan Transport Forum (MTF) is a group intended to assist Local Councils in their own public transport advocacy roles by providing information and resources. It holds meetings on the first Wednesday of each month at Melbourne Town Hall, starting 6pm, and larger public forums around Melbourne in the lead-up to each State election. Most attendees to the smaller meetings are councillors or officers, with the vast majority of Metropolitan Melbourne Councils sending between one and three attendees each, or representatives of kindrid organisations. Members of the public are welcome to attend and contribute, and I have been present at the vast majority of MTF meetings over the last decade, generally as an observer and occasionally to provide technical information. While the MTF deals with all aspects of (land) transport, including private motor cars, public transit and cycling, a commonly raised issue is Melbourne's bus system or lack thereof. This in particul...
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Summary of a Council Meeting - Glen Eira, 09-Apr-19

Council Outline The Council of the City of Glen Eira is situated at the edge of what might be considered Melbourne's inner ring of suburbs, having been formed in 1994 when the City of Caulfield's territory was expanded to cover the northern half of the City of Moorabbin (Glen Eira City Council). The expansion has generally been accommodated well, although some landmarks are still named for the former boundaries such as the Moorabbin Hospital on Centre Road , and small pockets of land around the boundaries which probably should be absorbed from adjacent councils, on grounds of community interaction. As at 2016, the council had roughly 150,000 residents across nearly 40 square kilometres, giving an average density of around 40 residents per hectare. This made it the fifth-most densely populated local government area in the state, after the City of Port Phillip (above 50), and the Cities of Melbourne, Stonnington and Yarra (40-50) (ID Consulting 2017). The statistical avera...
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Where the State fails and Local Government steps in - a study of the Bayside City Council buses

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Outline Melbourne's bus system is the poor cousin of the public transport offering, and it has long been a point of contention between the State and most Local Governments (MTF 2018) . This is particularly true for areas outside the operating radius of the tram system, because the tram network (at route length x 400m either side of the track) has a density of 2.35 vehicles per km² while the amalgamated bus system only has 0.71 buses per km² (the remaining area in the Melbourne U rban G rowth B oundary ); and the ratio between these values approximately matches the typical service frequencies (vicsig.net; busaustralia.net; P ublic T ransport V ictoria 2019 ) . Bayside City Council is on the southern edge of the tram system, so it experiences this differential more sharply than, say, Dandenong, which is entirely dependant on the pathetic bus offering without being teased by something better just over the horizon. To take just one example, at time of writing the Route 64 tr...
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