Mode shift | Charting Transport

Public transport patronage trends in Australasian cities

Sat 13 November, 2010

[updated 12 January 2015]

With some effort and assistance from others, I’ve managed to compile public transport patronage data for major cities in Australia and New Zealand. What follows are trends on what I do have, including figures for 2013-14 for most cities.

A large number of caveats are required around the data (particularly Sydney). I have used South East Queensland (the TransLink service area) and what I am calling Sydney and surrounds (the catchment for CityRail including Sydney, Newcastle/Hunter, and Wollongong/Illawarra). See below for full details.

Overall Patronage growth

This chart shows growth in patronage since 2001-02 (an arbitrary start year).

Observations:

Several cities have shown very strong growth:
- In Perth part of this can be attributed to the opening of the Mandurah rail line in late 2007.
- Melbourne saw strong patronage growth between 2004 and 2011, with a particularly big jump in 2008-09.
- South East Queensland invested in bus services between 2003 and 2009, including radial busways to the Brisbane CBD. However patronage peaked in 2009-10, and has been flat or declining since. This may be impacted by the floods and associated free travel periods (not counted as patronage), and recent above-CPI fare price rises. Also train patronage under the old paper ticketing system may have been overestimated – creating an inconsistency in the time series as people transition to Go Card.
- Auckland and Christchurch had very strong growth to a peak in 2002-03 (attributed by some to a boom in international students), a lull and then strong growth again from 2007. Christchurch patronage fell dramatically in 2010-11 following a major earthquake that closed large parts of the CBD (where PT probably had a high mode share) and led to population decline.
The other cities are languishing significantly behind:
- Sydney’s problems with public transport are often discussed, and I understand there has been relatively little expansion in services in recent years. Some modest growth is evident from 2010 onwards. It is very difficult to obtain Sydney bus patronage data, and I do not have a 2013-14 data point.
- Adelaide has not been investing significantly in bus or train services in recent years (although that is now changing). Patronage peaked in 2009-10. The completion of recent rail upgrades may see rises in the coming years.
- Canberra has seen both funding cuts and increases over the years.
- Hobart is included for completeness. I cannot comment on reasons for patronage trends there. Their annual report does.
- Wellington has also had only modest patronage growth, although it maintains the strongest rate of public transport use in New Zealand.

Note:

Greater Sydney data is very difficult to obtain – mostly because private bus, ferry and light rail data is not published in any consistent form. In the above I have used a dataset prepared by BITRE and data published by the NSW Bureau of Transport Statistics.

Train patronage

Auckland train patronage growth is off the chart. 2013-14 patronage was around 508% higher than 2001-02 patronage, following 10 consecutive years of annual growth above 10% (there was actually a decline in patronage in 2012-13 of 8.3% but growth rebounded in 2013-14 to 14.4%). Auckland has been heavily investing in services, a new city terminal, and electrification. Patronage growth is off a very small base, such that percentage growth rates are very large.
You can see the significant surge in Perth train patronage following the opening of the Mandurah line in late 2007. Patronage has more than doubled in 10 years, although curiously declined in 2013-14.
Melbourne saw a steady increase in train patronage between 2005 and 2011, an easing in 2011-12, but further growth since then.
South East Queensland train patronage figures dropped after 2009. TransLink make a comment about a change of ticketing system impacting these figures in their tracker report (previous estimates probably being inflated), so it is unclear what the “real” trend is.
Adelaide train patronage dropped until 2012 as lines closed for extended periods to enable electrification works. Lines have reopened and electric services are running, with a bounce in patronage evident from 2012.

Bus patronage

South East Queensland is by far the standout for bus patronage growth, which has followed substantial investment in busways and increases in bus frequency. Patronage almost doubled to 2012 on SEQ buses, although there has been a decline post 2012.
Melbourne’s bus patronage has grown significantly since 2006-07 onwards, although with a difficult to explain spike in 2011-12.
Perth’s bus patronage is an interesting story. Between 2007-08 and 2009-10, patronage increased by 14%, while timetabled kms only increased by 2.8%. When the Mandurah line was opened in late 2007, buses that previously travelled into the city were converted into rail feeder buses. This significantly reduced the bus trip lengths and hence passenger trip lengths for people who now transfer onto trains (the introduction of transfers might also have increased total boardings more than the total number of “journeys”). Presumably it meant that bus frequencies could be improved and/or buses were reconfigured to meet travel demands that were not well catered for previously.

Ferry and light rail patronage

Brisbane ferry patronage almost doubled between 2002-03 and 2008-09, collapsed in 2010-11 following service suspensions and cutbacks resulting from flood damage, and then bounced back from 2011 and is growing stronger still. The strong growth to 2008-09 followed increased services, and fare integration with other modes.
Adelaide tram patronage grew significantly following the tram extensions into the city that opened in 2007 and 2010 (travel within the CBD area being free). For reasons better known to others, Adelaide tram patronage has declined since 2011.
Sydney ferry patronage has been mostly flat until 2013 (note: at the time of writing I did not have a good estimate of private ferry patronage (approx 9% of all ferry patronage) – from 2009-10 onwards I have simply assumed no change in those numbers for want of something better).

Boardings per capita

Trends in public transport patronage will of course be impacted by population growth, so the ratio of the two can be a good indicator of system performance.

However, it is not necessarily fair to compare cities. The Sydney transit area includes many urban areas significantly detached from the main Sydney metropolitan area, including the cities of Newcastle and Wollongong. South East Queensland includes the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. But the Melbourne catchment does not include Victoria’s equivalent city of Geelong. The boardings per capita figure for the main Sydney and Brisbane metropolitan areas would likely be higher than the figures here. So it is more important to look at trends (household travel survey mode share figures may be a better method of comparison).

This chart shows Melbourne as the stand-out in terms of increasing boardings per capita, a trend that started in 2004-05 (as many other of my posts have shown), although with some decline in 2012-13.
South East Queensland showed an increasing trend between around 2003-04 and 2008-09 but has since been in decline.
Perth had a significant increase in 2008-09, following the opening of the Mandurah rail line.
Adelaide has declined in recent years (in part due to rail works) while Canberra and Hobart remain flat.
Sydney+surrounds has bucked the trend of the larger cities, with no great increase in boardings per capita.
Wellington has the highest boardings per capita in New Zealand (notionally higher than most Australian cities). When you take into account that Wellington does not have a heavily transfer-orientated PT network, a figure for PT “journeys” per capita for Wellington is likely to be very competitive with Melbourne and Sydney.
Auckland has seen some steady growth in recent years from a low base.
Christchurch had seen some small growth to 2009-10, but collapsed in 2010-11, after major earthquake disruptions in the city. They appear to have arrested the decline in 2012-13.

Again, I must stress that it is dangerous to read too much into comparisons between cities because of the somewhat arbitrary definitions of transit system area boundaries.

For New Zealand, I have used “service area population” estimates kindly provided to me by Ian Wallis and Associates (for up to 2009-10) and then applied district population growth rates to estimate 2010-11 (and subsequent) service area populations.

A slightly better measure than public transport boardings per capita might be public transport journeys (or linked trips) per capita. This is something I would like to explore more in a future post.

The BITRE yearbook includes data on passenger kms per mode per city. From this data it is possible to obtain estimates of mass transit passenger kms per capita (I say mass transit, as they do not distinguish public and private bus). Here’s a chart using the 2014 yearbook data:

The trends are not dissimilar to my chart above. The BITRE figures are presumably a multiplication of estimated boardings (very similar data to mine) by estimated average route length (I suspect highly accurate time series, data on this is hard to find), or similar.

Long term patronage data

David Cosgrove from BITRE recently collated annual data on public transport patronage for all Australian capital cities, right back to 1900. His very interesting ATRF 2011 paper is here. He includes several summary charts which I won’t repeat here. What follows is some further analysis of this particular dataset.

The following chart shows estimated public transport trips per capita over 110 years:

Note BITRE used Sydney statistical division population with all Cityrail patronage, which is different to my approach above. It probably explains why Sydney figures are much higher.

Public transport usage rates grew until Word War 1, dropped in the Great Depression, peaked during petrol rationing in World War 2, and then declined until around 1980. In the bottom right corner you can see several cities trending upwards in recent times.

It is interesting to see Canberra had comparatively very low rates of public transport use until the 1980s – perhaps the product a low density car-based city from the start? Although public transport was clearly important leading up to Word War 2.

The Darwin figures are even lower – I’m not sure of the history but perhaps Darwin only became big enough to need public transport in the 1950s, a time when the car was becoming widely affordable.

You can see a spike in Hobart PT use from 1975 to 1977 – when the Tasman Bridge connecting the two sides of the city was severed after being struck by a ship.

The paper also includes estimates of passenger kms by mode since 1945. Here is a chart showing public transport mode share of motorised passenger kms:

Again I think the Sydney figures are inflated by non-Sydney Cityrail patronage.

More BITRE analysis is available in this 2014 paper.

Caveats and Disclaimers

This stuff is important, particularly for Sydney figures. (Similar caveats would apply to the long-term data from BITRE immediately above)

Patronage is invariably an estimation exercise, as not all passengers buy or validate a ticket when they board. The methodology used by agencies probably varies quite a bit. For example, Translink don’t seem to estimate free trips. The figures I have presented however are estimates of boardings (including boardings on journeys involving transfers). As far as I am aware, they include school children travelling on government funded bus services.
I have adjusted official Melbourne bus patronage figures to account for a change in estimation methodology.
Sydney bus patronage is very difficult to estimate, as figures are not routinely published for private operators. I’ve used a BITRE time series for Greater Sydney bus patronage (related to this paper).
The Sydney ferries figures include private operators (maybe 1-2 million per year), but I have had to estimate figures post 2009-10.
Sydney Metro light rail don’t generally publish their patronage figures to great precision. The 2008-09 figure I have is 7 million (rounded to the nearest million).
I have calculated the population of “Sydney+surrounds” as a combination of SA3 areas covering metropolitan Sydney, Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and Illawarra region. Here’s a map. Unfortunately it’s not a perfect match for the footprint of CityRail and “outer metropolitan” bus services, but I think reasonably close, particularly for trend analysis purposes.
South East Queensland includes Greater Brisbane Statistical Area plus the SA4 areas of Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast.
For other cities I have used population figures for Greater Perth (which includes Mandurah), Greater Adelaide and the Melbourne Statistical Division (estimated for 2011-12 based on an SA2 mapping, as towns within the “Greater Melbourne” Statistical Area that are not in the old Melbourne Statistical Division are not counted in official metropolitan bus and train patronage figures).
For all financial year population figures I have averaged the June 30 estimates at either end of each financial year.
I have not included:
- Hobart ferries (with limited commuter services)
- Queanbeyan buses (which connect Canberra with the satellite town of Queanbeyan, just over the border in NSW)
- Metropolitan V/Line services in Melbourne: diesel train services currently operate to Melton which is in the Melbourne Statistical Division and has bus patronage that is counted as “metropolitan”. In previous years, V/line diesel trains also serviced the metropolitan area between St Albans and Sunbury and between Broadmeadows and Craigieburn (until these sections were electrified). I understand the metropolitan patronage on these services is in the order of a few million boardings per year, which is less than 1% of total Melbourne public transport patronage.
School holidays typically impact on public transport patronage (particularly suburban buses), and not all financial years contain the same number of (high patronage) school days as school holidays often straddle the June/July break of month. Different states have holidays in different weeks. This means that the individual growth figure for one year in one city might be impacted by up to 1-2% away from the underlying trend. However, this should wash out over several years for index values.
Compiling patronage figures is a very messy business. I’ve done the best I can, but I cannot guarantee that there are no omissions or calculation errors.

Data sources:

Data compiled by the “Federal Department of Transport” and the West Australian newspaper (credit to Andrew Probyn).
Victorian Department of Transport
Victorian Budget Papers
Metlink (Vic), now absorbed by PTV
PTAWA annual reports and TransPerth statistics
DTEI and DPTI (SA) annual reports, media reports and personal communications
NSW Bureau of Transport Statistics
Metro Tasmania Annual Report
TAMS annual reports (ACT)
BITRE
Translink (QLD)
Ian Wallis and Associates (NZ)
New Zealand Ministry of Transport, Transport Monitoring Indicator Framework

9 Comments | Australian Cities, Mode share, Mode shift, New Zealand cities | Tagged: BITRE | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Trends in Melbourne Traffic

Sun 31 October, 2010

[first posted January 2010, last updated July 2013]

Each year, VicRoads publishes Traffic Systems Performance Monitoring bulletins that contain a wealth of data. However the bulletins don’t always show the longer term trends, so here are some charts to illuminate some of what is happening, particularly around congestion and total traffic volumes in Melbourne, and also a comparison of road traffic and public transport use growth.

Since the 2010-11 bulletin, VicRoads have changed the way they report various statistics. This post includes some charts of measures no longer reported, and in many cases the figures for 2010-11 and 2011-12 have been read off charts (as numbers were not published), so there is a little less precision.

Travel Speeds

The first chart shows average travel speed around Melbourne by time of day.

The figures show a gradual slowing of speeds, although with some more erratic results in the AM peak in recent time (VicRoads haven’t offered an explanation, and I don’t have one either).

What about for different types of roads?

Speeds have been declining on some road types, particularly inner freeways and inner undivided roads. Upgrades to the M1 completed in late 2009 may have increased speeds in 2010-11, but this appears to have been largely eroded in 2011-12.

Curiously, freeways slowed down after CityLink opened in 2001. Inner roads have been trending downwards slightly while outer roads seem to be steady (though with a slight increase in 2009-10). Outer freeways showed an increase in speed in 2008-09, which is related to the opening of Eastlink, but this was more than eroded in 2009-10, possibly related to the Ring Road widening works.

How does Melbourne compare to other Australian cities? This data is from AustRoads (except the 2011-12 figure for Melbourne):

A gradual slowing trend is evident in most cities, except for speeding up in Melbourne and Brisbane up to 2010-11 (although Melbourne slowed down again in 2011-12). The Perth and Brisbane data seems to move around a lot more than the other cities. See the AustRoads website for qualifications on the data.

All-day average speeds by road type have not been reported for years after 2009-10, but here are the previous results:

Is speed a good thing? If you want to get to your destination sooner, then obviously it is. If you want to improve safety and the liveability of streets, it possibly isn’t. A lot of road safety initiatives (eg right turn signal controls) actually slow down traffic. The other consideration is whether you experience the same travel speed each day – which brings us to…

Travel time variability

Another measure of congestion is travel time variability. If it sometimes takes 40 minutes to get to work, and you need to arrive at work on time, you have to leave yourself 40 minutes, even if on average it takes 30 minutes.

The recent trend has been towards increased variability after some improvements in 2009-10.

Traffic volumes

Since the 2010-11 Traffic Monitor report, VicRoads have completely revised their estimates for total arterial road traffic volumes and have divided Melbourne into three zones (inner, middle and outer) whereas previous results were for two zones (inner and outer). The new results show some quite different trends. I’ve read the data off the charts (not an exact process), to produce the following chart showing growth index figures (old figures in blue, revised figures in orange):

The previous estimates suggested traffic volumes stopped growing around 2004-05, whereas the revised estimates suggest an outer suburban growth spurt from around 2006, and a strong middle suburban growth spurt from around 2010. The 2011-12 bulletin did not include estimates for 2011-12.

This is what VicRoads says about the new method:

VicRoads has recently developed a new method for estimating road use in Melbourne. The new method uses all available vehicle counts to calculate VKT for all arterial roads and freeways in Melbourne. VKT values used in previous editions of the Traffic Monitor were derived from the monitored network only. The new method captures travel for the whole of Melbourne and allows estimates to be retrospectively made for previous years.

BITRE also estimate total Melbourne vehicle kilometres (using fuel sales data, so including all roads, not just arterials and freeways). The most recent data at the time of updating this post was Information Sheet 44. Here’s a comparison (again using index values):

The BITRE data suggests a slightly different trend, but a similar overall growth figure and recent stronger growth. Putting the two VKT estimates together suggests that around 75% of Melbourne vehicle kilometres are travelled on arterials and freeways.

To add a little more context, here is a chart comparing road traffic and public transport patronage growth:

This chart really tells a story. Over eleven years to 2012, Melbourne public transport patronage has grown around three times more than road traffic.

Traffic growth on different road types

Here is a chart with 2010-11 data using the new road type classifications:

And here is the longer term trend using the older road types (up to 2009-10 only):

Traffic on freeways has risen substantially – not surprising given massive investment in freeway infrastructure over the last couple of decades. There has been a substantial growth in the last few years, reflecting the opening of Eastlink in 2008, the widening of the M1 in 2009, and diversion of some traffic off other outer roads (and you can see a decline in “outer – divided”). Otherwise, freeway traffic volumes seem to be growing while arterial roads are showing stagnant or declining traffic volumes.

Take the freeways off the chart and you can see trends on other roads a bit more clearly:

Traffic volumes have trended downwards on undivided inner roads (including those with trams), and have largely stagnated on all other non-freeway roads in recent times. You can also see a significant drop on outer-divided roads in 2008-09 – possible some of it from Springvale and Stud Roads that parallel EastLink.

For more detail (including other charts), I suggest reading the Traffic Systems Performance Monitoring bulletins on the VicRoads website.

6 Comments | Australian Cities, Melbourne, Mode shift, Road Traffic | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Public transport mode shift and road congestion

Sun 4 July, 2010

Is a modal shift to public transport an effective way to reduce road traffic congestion pressures?

I’ve discussed this issue in a few posts, but I think the following simple chart pretty much sums it all up:

You can see a significant change in both trends from around 2004 onwards.

Arguably public transport mode shift has been the most effective method for relieving congestion pressures in Melbourne in the last five years.

That is not to say traffic congestion has been solved or significantly eased, but it would likely have become much worse if road traffic volumes had continued to grow after 2004-05.

More posts on road traffic and mode shift.

3 Comments | Melbourne, Mode shift, Road Traffic | Tagged: Short post | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Which trips are shifting modes in Melbourne?

Sun 20 June, 2010

We know there has been a strong shift to public transport in Australian cities, but which trips are changing modes?

I thought it worth examining Melbourne journey-to-work data from the ABS census for years 2001 and 2006 to look for patterns. Although much of the recent mode shift has occurred post 2006, this analysis still provides insights into the earlier mode shift that started in Melbourne around 2004.

I’ve specifically looked at trips with and between concentric rings of Melbourne, to keep the analysis relatively simple.

Note that journeys to work only represent around 27-30% of weekday trips in Melbourne (depending whether you measure trips or trip legs), so this isn’t a complete look at travel. However, the census does provide an extremely comprehensive dataset as pretty much the entire population was captured.

This isn’t a short post, so grab a cuppa. The second last chart is possibly the most interesting. And apologies that not all charts are easy to read as I haven’t quite mastered the best way to import charts into WordPress. Click on charts to see a larger cleaner version.

Defining regions:

Firstly, I’ve used the following definitions of “city” (or inner city), “inner” (or inner suburbs), “middle” and “outer” Melbourne:

(Note: these region definitions are quite different to those used in another post on urban sprawl and consolidation which had larger “inner” and “middle” regions).

Melbourne’s trams generally service the inner city and inner suburbs, while buses mostly service the inner, middle and outer suburbs. The metropolitan train network is shown in blue.

Note: this post looks at journeys to work between these rings, and not journeys that start or finish outside the Melbourne Statistical District. I don’t see this as an issue as I’m not trying to represent total Melbourne mode shares.

Total journey to work volumes

The journey to work data includes 1.25 million trips, 115,890 from the “city”, 191,556 from the “inner”, 442,282 from the “middle” and 498,595 from the “outer”.

To start the analysis, the following two charts shows the number of trips between each ring of Melbourne:

The next chart shows the change in number of journeys between each ring:

There has been a significant growth in trips from the outer suburbs (in line with population growth).

The next two charts show the 2006 flows looking at the destination share of each origin ring (adds to 100% for each “from region”), and as origin share for each destination ring (adds to 100% for each “to region”):

Some observations:

The largest movements are within the middle and outer suburbs, and to the city and inner suburbs.
People in the middle and outer suburbs are more likely to work in the inner city than the inner suburbs. Perhaps because it is easier to get to the inner city.
The middle suburbs are the biggest source of inner city workers (33%). Little wonder the trains are under stress.
Few people in the inner city and suburbs commute to the middle and outer suburbs, but there has been an increase in the number of people in the middle suburbs commuting to the outer suburbs.

Public transport mode shares

The following chart shows the public transport mode share for trips between the rings (those being any trip involving public transport):

Not surprisingly:

Public transport has a high mode share for trips to the inner city, but less so for people coming from the outer suburbs. Other evidence I have seen shows consistently high public transport mode share for trips to the CBD and surrounds, so this would probably suggest lower public transport mode share to the inner city outside vicinity of the CBD (remember from the above that “inner city” includes several local government areas).
Public transport mode share is higher for origins and destinations closer to the city centre, where service levels are more attractive than the middle and outer suburbs.
Public transport mode share for trips wholly within the middle and outer suburbs is very low. This presents challenges for the new Central Activities Districts, which will need higher quality public transport to avoid heavy car dependence.

The next chart shows the change in public transport mode share between 2001 and 2006:

Observations:

The biggest shifts have occurred for trips to the inner city from the suburbs.
The next biggest mode shifts have been for outward trips from the inner city to the suburbs – although these are small in number.
Following that there have been small mode shifts to public transport for trips to the inner suburbs.
The figures actually suggest a 1.4% decline in public transport mode share for trips wholly within the inner city, even though there were around 3000 more such journeys in 2006. More on this follows below.
There was very little mode shift for journeys within the middle and outer suburbs, where public transport service levels are relatively low.

Looking at percent mode shares is not the fully story, as it depends on the volumes. The following chart shows the absolute change in trips by public transport between 2001 and 2006:

The chart shows significant growth in public transport trips to the inner city, particularly from the suburbs.

The following charts look at the increase in journeys involving each mode of public transport.

The biggest growth in train journeys has been from the outer suburbs to the inner city, followed by the middle and inner suburbs. This is consistent with evidence in another post that suggests train patronage is strongly linked to CBD employment.

Interestingly, this chart shows that additional journeys involving trams come from all parts of Melbourne. I would suggest this would be a combination of people living in the inner city and suburbs using nearby trams to get to jobs in the inner city, as well as people using trains from all parts of the city and transferring onto trams for the final leg to work. Melbourne’s multi-modal time-based ticketing removes any cost barrier from making such transfers – something still largely lacking in Sydney (is this a reason why there has been less mode shift in Sydney?).

You can also see an increase in train and tram usage for trips wholly within the inner city – despite the mode shift away from public transport in the inner city. This suggests the growth in public transport use from the inner city is being swamped by the growth in people walking and cycling to work (refer to charts on private car mode share below).

These generally small figures probably reflect the growth in population in the outer suburbs, more than anything else. However there is a notable increase in the use of buses by outer suburban commuters for trips to the inner city – suggesting more use of buses to access train stations (as very few outer suburban buses travel to the inner city).

Buses primarily serve the middle and outer suburbs of Melbourne, but they do aim to feed the train network. These figures suggest just 500 of the 7400 additional commuters from the outer suburbs to the inner city got to the station by bus. The average AM peak bus headway in the outer suburbs of Melbourne is over 40 minutes – which probably explains why new train users are not using buses to get to the station!

But curiously the data also shows only around 560 extra trips using both public and private transport to travel from the outer suburbs to the inner city, suggesting the other 6900 new commuters walked to stations in the outer suburbs. Perhaps this reflects full car parks at train stations.

This chart might suggest that people from the outer suburbs might be stealing parking places from those in the middle suburbs. However, there is an overall decline of around 1076 in people using private and public transport for journeys to work. As car parks are notorious for being full early on weekdays, this might suggest that the car parks are being used by journeys to places other than work.

For reference, the following chart shows who is using both private and public transport (mostly park and ride, but also car passengers who also used PT (kiss and ride)). I understand there are around 30,000 car parking spaces at Melbourne train stations, and the journey to work data shows around 23,500 car + train journeys to work.

In a future post I plan to look at concentrations of combinations of modes in journeys to work. The results are quite interesting if you know local conditions around Melbourne.

Active transport mode shares

Along the same lines as above, the next charts shows mode shift towards active transport. I have considered a trip active transport if it involves a bicycle, or if it only involves walking.

No surprises that active transport trips are generally within the same ring (short trips), and active transport has a higher mode share closer to the city (better cycling facilities and closer origins and destinations). Growth in the number of active transport trips in the outer suburbs probably reflects population growth as much as anything.

The mode shift has occurred mostly in the inner city, but also for trips from the inner suburbs to the inner city. Perhaps disturbingly, active transport mode share in the outer suburbs has declined, although this is simply growth in non-active transport trips swamping growth in active transport trips:

Of particular interest is the increase in cycling trips, shown in the following chart:

Not surprisingly, the growth is primarily from the inner city and suburbs to the inner city (which has been a major focus on bicycle infrastructure investment).

Private transport

First chart shows private transport mode share by trip type:

No surprises that private transport has the highest mode share for trips between the middle and outer suburbs, and the lowest mode share for trips to the inner city.

The greatest asymmetry involves trips to and from the inner city. Private transport has a higher mode share for trips from the inner city to the inner suburbs than vice-versa, despite counter-peak public transport service levels still being reasonably good in the AM peak. I’d suggest this probably largely reflects the relative ease of parking in the inner suburbs compared to the inner city, although outbound traffic congestion would also be slightly lower.

There has been an almost universal mode shift away from private transport, as shown in the following chart (note these are mode shifts AWAY from private transport, which is different to other charts in this post):

Again, the biggest mode shifts have been on trips to the inner city (and on the small number of outbound trips from the inner city), and higher closer to the city. There has actually been a mode shift towards private transport in the outer suburbs, which are generally poorly served by public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure. In particular, new suburbs often don’t receive any public transport until well after most residents have moved in.

The above chart also represents the mode shift towards ‘sustainable’ transport modes (walking, cycling and public transport). It shows a more consistent pattern than the mode shift towards public transport. It appears that there is a consistent mode shift to sustainable modes for trips to the inner city, but those originating from the inner city and suburbs are more likely to be a shift to active transport. Or perhaps simultaneous shifts from private to public transport and public to active transport.

Which leads to perhaps the most interesting chart in this post:

According to the data, there were 6 (yes, just six) less private transport trips within the inner city (although this number is certainly not precise due to ABS’s randomisation introduced to protect privacy).
There was a net decline in the number of private transport trips from the inner and middle suburbs to the inner city.
There were almost 11,000 additional private transport trips from the outer suburbs to the inner city. These create maximum congestion and probably reflect the low public transport service levels in the outer suburbs, and the lack of jobs in the outer suburbs for the new residents.
The 100,000 additional private transport trips from the outer suburbs largely reflects the large population growth.

This is entirely consistent with the trends of traffic volume’s on Melbourne’s roads, which show stagnation of inner metropolitan traffic volumes. Further evidence that mode shift to public transport is preventing congestion from getting a lot worse.

Mode share of new trips

The following chart looks at the mode share of the absolute increase in journeys from each region. It essentially assumes that the existing population haven’t changed modes, but the new residents have chosen a different set of modes, which of course is very unlikely to be the case. But it does show the share of the growth in trips for region – for example, for every 100 new trips in the inner suburbs, only 20% of them were by private transport.

It shows that growth in active transport trips has dominated the inner city, while growth in public transport trips has dominated the inner and middle suburbs. Meanwhile, private transport has dominated the growth in trips in the outer suburbs. This is a very worrying statistic given half of Melbourne’s urban growth is in the outer suburbs.

Charting Transport