How do commuting distances vary across Australian cities?

Mon 9 October, 2023

Having previously analysed commuting distances in Melbourne and Victoria, this post turns attention to other Australian cities. I’ll answer questions such as: Where are there longer commutes? What might explain differences in commute distances? How long are commutes in outer urban growth areas in different cities?

I’m using ABS calculated on-road distances between homes and regular workplaces from the 2021 census, regardless of whether people travelled to work on census day. For more on the data and calculations see the last post.

How do median distances to work vary by city overall?

I’ve measured the median distance to work for both the usual residents and the workers of each greater capital city statistical area (GCCSA) for 2021. These are often a bit different because some people live and work in different GCCSAs, and I’ll come back to that.

The chart shows that the capital city areas all have longer median distances to work than other parts of each state, which is unsurprising. Here’s some comments on the cities in order:

  • Perth tops the chart with the longest median distances to work. Perth has a large and long low density footprint sprawled along the coastline, so long commuter distances are not hugely surprising.
  • Melbourne comes in second place. It is the largest city by area, but is more dense than Perth.
  • Brisbane comes in third place. Brisbane is slightly larger than Perth in area, but not stretched out quite so far, and with a larger population than Perth, but lower density than Melbourne.
  • Canberra is next. It’s a relatively small city so you might expect shorter commute distances, but overall it is quite a low density city with a fragmented urban structure (divided by green areas). It also has an extensive high-speed and rarely-congested highway network that makes driving longer distances relatively easy.
  • Sydney is next, the largest city by population and population density, and a city with multiple significant employment clusters, which probably contributes to a smaller median distance than most other big cities.
  • Darwin is a tiny city, but like Canberra it has a fragmented urban structure, and Darwin’s CBD is at the end of a peninsula (with a median distance for employees of 12 km), which probably contributes to relatively long median commutes.
  • Adelaide is the smallest of the five larger cities, with a mostly contiguous urban structure, which probably explains it’s lower median distances.
  • Hobart is another very small city, which probably explains shorter commutes, although it is split over a wide river mouth which would lengthen many commute distances.

On the chart you can also observe small differences between median distances for usual residents and workers in some cities that I think are worth mentioning:

  • Canberra has a longer median distance for workers, which probably reflects many workers living across the border in NSW.
  • Perth has a longer median distance for usual residents than workers, which might reflect fly-in-fly-out commuters who live in Perth.
  • Sydney and Melbourne have a longer median distance for workers, which might reflect commuters from outside the metropolitan area (particularly Melbourne’s many commuter towns which I explored in the last post).
  • Workers in the “rest of WA” and “rest of NT” have relatively long median distances, which I suspect reflects fly-in-fly-out employment in the resources sector.

How do distances to work vary across cities

I’ve already examined Melbourne in my last post. What follows are maps and some discussion for other cities, followed by some observations across the cities.

Sydney

(you might want to click/tap to expand some of these maps to see the detail more clearly)

Shorter median distances were found around in areas around the Sydney CBD, which is no surprise. Generally longer distances were seen in the growth areas to the south-west (including Oran Park, Leppington, Gledswood Hills, Gregory Hills, Edmondson), north-west (including Schofields, Marsden Park, Box Hill) and eastern Blue Mountains (including Springwood and Hazelbrook, but not Katoomba).

Other relative outliers include:

  • Bundeena in the far south-east (median distances up to 50 km), which is connected to the rest of Sydney by a very long and windy road journey through the Royal National Park, plus a short ferry to Cronulla (not considered by ABS when calculating commute distances).
  • Pockets of Bonnet Bay in the south (median distance of 26 km) which have a rather indirect access road to the rest of Sydney.
  • Palm Beach (median distance of 37 km) at the tip of the northern beaches region.

Does Sydney have commuter towns? Yes, but perhaps not as many as Melbourne. The map above shows long median distances as far as Hazelbrook in the west, and the map below shows several towns to the south that show longer median distances (many commuters from these towns might also work in Wollongong).

Here’s how Sydney looks for the ratio of jobs to workers in SA3s:

The outer south-west has a low ratio and is quite remote from any SA3 with a surplus of jobs, hence relatively long median distances to work. Some pockets of the north-west had low ratios, but were adjacent to higher ratio areas nearby.

Here are median distances to work by workplace destination zones (DZs):

Unlike Melbourne there were not large industrial areas with median distances over 20 km.

There were a few isolated pockets with long distances including Badgerys Creek (Western Sydney International Airport construction site), the Holsworthy Army Barracks, and Waterfall (maybe related to a rail depot).

Here’s the proportion of workers who were employed in central Sydney (including Sydney CBD, Haymarket, Millers Point, The Rocks):

Like most cities, the influence of the central city declines with distance from the CBD. Some relative anomalies for their distance include:

  • Outer north-western suburbs (including Baulkham Hills and Blacktown – North SA3s) have relatively high dependence on the Sydney CBD for jobs, and associated longer median commuter distances.
  • Bankstown is relatively close to the Sydney CBD but with with many SA2s below 10% for central city workers, perhaps reflecting relative socio-economic disadvantage.

South East Queensland

First up, Brisbane medians distances by home SA1:

The longest median distances can be found in some low density suburban areas around Jimboomba, Yarrabilba, New Beith, Lowood, and the Lockyer Valley. Some relatively long median distances were also seen around Ormeau and Pimpama (suburbs between Brisbane and the Gold Coast), Springfield Lakes, parts of Caboolture, and Bribie Island. Looking at the urban fabric, these appear to be mostly relatively modern low density residential estates (rather than old towns). I’m not seeing many commuter towns around Brisbane.

Curiously there are relatively short median distances around the outer suburban area of Ipswich in the west (I’ll come back to this).

Here’s the Gold Coast:

Median distances are mostly relatively short except for the northern fringe and around Tambourine Mountain in the hinterland. Jobs are much more distributed across the Gold Coast (see map below) compared to other cities dominated by one CBD, which might explain relatively short commute distances.

Here’s the Sunshine Coast:

Distances are relatively short except for the Glass House Mountains and Beerwah to the south (probably containing commuters to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast).

Here’s how South East Queensland looks for jobs to workers ratio:

You can see surpluses of jobs in the central parts of Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.

The outer suburban Ipswich area comes in surprisingly high at 0.8, which almost certainly explains the relatively shorter distances to work found in the area. I’m not very familiar with Brisbane’s urban history, but the presence of so many jobs in the Ipswich area is probably saving a fair amount commuting distance and taking some pressure of the transport network.

Jimboomba and The Hills District had a ratio as low as 0.3. Jimboomba’s low density, fragmented urban structure, lack of local jobs, and remoteness from the main Brisbane urban area likely explains the very long median distances to work, and likely high levels of car dependency.

Here are median distances to work by workplace DZs for the Brisbane area:

Long distances were seen around Brisbane Airport and the Port of Brisbane (24-25 km, both relatively remote from residential areas), the Yatala industrial areas on Brisbane’s outer south (25-26 km), Wacol (21 km, which is dominated by correctional facilities), Swanbank (22 km, dominated by power stations), and the RAAF Amberley air base in Rosewood (22 km).

Here is map showing the proportion of workers who worked in “central Brisbane” (defined as the Brisbane CBD plus Spring Hill SA2):

There aren’t huge anomalies by distance. But I might perhaps call out New Beith in the south, Elimbah in the north, and North Stradbroke Island in the east as relative outliers with not-so-low (5-10%) percentages working in central Brisbane. You can also see the Ipswich area had a low dependence on central Brisbane for employment, consistent with the relatively high rate of job self-sufficiency.

Perth

Perth has the longest median distance to work of all capital cities, and you can see many suburbs with relatively long distances, most acutely in the far-north around Two Rocks and Yanchep (several SA1s having a median above 40 km) and Yunderup (between Mandurah and Pinjarra in the south). Long median distances are seen north of Joondalup, throughout the satellite Ellenbrook region in the north-east, in Mount Helena and other hills towns to the east, around Byford in the south-east, around Wellard and Baldivis in the south, and in coastal areas between Rockingham and Mandurah.

I should point out that the map only includes Greater Perth SA1s. The SA2 of Chittering to the north east of Perth (including Muchea and Bindoon) has a median distance to work of 46 km, and 54% of its workers worked in Greater Perth (to which is it connected by a freeway). It contains quite a few very low density rural-living residential areas.

Here’s the jobs to worker ratio map:

There were very low ratios in the outer northern, eastern, and south-eastern suburbs, which explains the long median distances to work from these areas.

Here are median distances to work by workplace destination zones:

The longest medians were seen for Perth Airport and around the Kwinana industrial areas. Other destination zones with long distances are rural areas outside of Perth (not unexpected), plus Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) where distances are obviously not on-road but imputed to be 1.3 times the straight line distance. Many workers are likely to commute by ferry from Perth.

Here’s the proportion of workers who work in central Perth (defined as including the CBD, Northbridge and East Perth):

The dependence on central Perth extends a fair way into the jobs-poor northern suburbs. Both the northern suburbs train line and the Mitchell Freeway have been extended several times as the urban area has expanded, perhaps a case of transport-driven sprawl.

The CBD’s influence also extends a fair distance south including Wellard and Baldivis that have relatively long median distances to work (and are closer to the Kwinana Freeway than the Mandurah rail line).

Adelaide

Median distances to work were relatively short for most of the main contiguous urban area of Adelaide. Higher medians were seen in the detached urban areas of Gawler in the north, Aldinga Beach in the south, and many Adelaide Hills towns (particularly outer parts of Mount Barker).

Here is the jobs to workers ratio map:

The outer suburbs on all sides had low ratios and hence longer median distances to work.

Here are median distances to workplaces by destination zone:

Median distances are relatively short for most workplace areas with the relatively urban exceptions of North Haven / Outer Harbour (at the tip of a peninsula), and the RAAF Edinburgh air base in the north.

Canberra

Most areas of Canberra had median distances under 20km, except around Banks in the far south, and Googong to the south-east (over the border in New South Wales, where 73% of workers work in the ACT).

I’ve previously described towns with a very long median distance as commuter towns – and for Canberra this would include Murrumbateman, Gundaroo, Bungendore, and Collector.

Here is the jobs to worker ratio map for SA3s:

Canberra East had a huge ratio – only 532 workers lived in that SA3 dominated by employment land uses. Low ratios were seen in Tuggeranong in the south, Gungahlin in the north, and Queanbeyan to the east (which had a ratio 0.5 and 71% of workers in the Queanbeyan SA2 worked in the ACT).

An extremely low ratio of 0.1 was seen around the Molonglo Valley, but this area is right next door to jobs rich areas of central Canberra.

The Young – Yass SA3 to the north west of Canberra came in at 0.7, unusually low for a regional area suggesting some dependence on Canberra for jobs. In fact 52% of workers in Yass Surrounds and 34% of the Yass township worked in the ACT. The town of Yass had median distances to work mostly under 5 km, however the 75th percentile distances to work in many parts of Yass was over 40 km.

Here are median distances to work for workplace destination zones:

The only urban area with relatively long workplace median distances was Canberra airport.

I’m not going to do as detailed analysis for the smaller cities that follow.

Hobart

The main urban areas of Hobart had relatively short distances, with outlying commuters towns such as New Norfolk, Brighton, Sorell, Dodges Ferry, Snug, and particularly South Arm showing much longer medians.

Newcastle / Central Coast / Hunter region

Longer median distances are seen at several small urban areas between Wyong and Newcastle, around Kurri Kurri – Abermain. Branxton, Clarence Town, Lemon Tree Passage, and Tanilba Bay. Singleton, Cessnock, and Nelson Bay have relatively short median distances and are likely less reliant on Newcastle for employment.

Wollongong

Note data is not shown for urban areas around Robertson and Mittagong.

Median distances were mostly relatively short, with exceptions in the north (Helensburgh) and south (Albion Park, Kiama, and Gerringong) of what is also a skinny coast-hugging urban settlement pattern.

How do the urban growth areas of big cities compare?

For this analysis I’ve filtered for new (in 2021) outer urban growth SA1s, and calculated the population-weighted-average median distance to work of these SA1s aggregated to SA3 level (not a perfect calculation, but hopefully close enough).

Note: The Tullamarine – Broadmeadows SA3 in Melbourne is perhaps poorly named – it actually includes Craigieburn and stretches north to Mickleham.

The outer urban growth SA3s with the longest median distances to work (perhaps call them commuter suburbs) were Sunbury in Melbourne’s north-west, followed by Melton – Bacchus Marsh in Melbourne’s west, Jimboomba south of Brisbane, Rockingham and Kwinana south of Perth, and Bringelly – Green Valley in Sydney’s west.

The outer urban growth SA3s with the shortest median distances to work included those around the smaller city of Canberra, the Ipswich region of western Brisbane, and the Baulkham Hills region of north-western Sydney. New residents in these areas will be generating fewer commuter kilometres to their city’s transport task (relative to other outer growth areas).

You might be wondering why Adelaide is missing from the above chart. It is a city with quite slow population growth and did not have enough growth in each SA3s to qualify with my filters.

Here’s the same data aggregated up to city level, which shows Adelaide actually with the longest commute distances from outer growth areas, followed by Perth.

What can we take away from this city analysis?

Longer commute distances seem to be strongly associated with imbalances in the distribution of jobs and workers within cities, particularly where these imbalances stretch out over long distances (Perth being the classic example). That’s probably no great surprise to many readers.

So if a city wanted to reduce commuting distances (and therefore demand on its transport system) it could consider:

  • slowing urban sprawl – particularly in corridors which already have worker to jobs imbalances and long commute distances,
  • increasing residential densities around existing major employment clusters, and/or
  • attempting to distribute more employment to outside the CBD – probably easier said than done, but Sydney has done it successfully with relatively high public transport mode share, while Canberra has done it with low public transport mode share (~12%) in town centres.

6 Comments | Australian Cities, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Urban Planning | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

How do commuting distances vary across Melbourne and Victoria?

Mon 18 September, 2023

Where do workers have the longest travel distance to work? What workplace locations have workers that live far away? How far are commuters in new urban greenfield areas from their workplaces? How do distances to work vary by gender? Where is a lack of local jobs leading to longer commute distances? Where are Victoria’s commuter towns?

This post explores ABS census data on the on-road distances between homes and workplaces around Melbourne and Victoria (a future post may cover other parts of Australia).

See the appendix at the end of this post for more details on the data and calculations.

Melbourne and surrounds

Here are median on-road distances to work around Melbourne for 2021:

Technical note: I’ve filtered for SA1s with 2+ persons aged 15+ per hectare to focus on relatively urban areas.

The shortest median distances in 2021 were around the central city. Longer distance were seen in the outer suburbs with the longest distances on the urban fringe – particularly Manor Lakes, Werribee West, and Pakenham, the “satellite” urban areas of Melton, Sunbury, and Eynesbury, and in some hills towns between Belgrave and Gembrook in the east. This makes sense as outer suburban area are generally further away from jobs.

Urban fringe growth areas

The following map shows the typical distances to work from greenfields areas on the western and northern urban fringe of Melbourne.

You might want to click/tap on this one to make the labels easier to read.

And here are the south-east urban growth areas:

Technical notes: I’ve filtered for brand new SA1s (in 2021) on the urban fringe where the containing SA2 has had population growth of 1000+ people between 2016 and 2021 (consistent with previous analysis of urban fringe areas on this blog). I’ve then aggregated to a median distance to work for each SA2 (being the median of the new SA1 medians). Labels are mostly SA2 names but I’ve renamed some for clarity.

Different growth fronts have very different median distances to work. For example, median distances to work from Manor Lakes were almost double those of Truganina, Wollert, Roxburgh Park, and Cranbourne.

How did distance to work relate to distance to Melbourne?

Here’s a scatter plot comparing home distances from the Melbourne CBD and median distances to work at SA1 geography (using same urban filter as above):

There’s a bit going on here. In areas very close to the Melbourne CBD, median distances to work increase pretty much linearly with distance from the CBD, suggesting these areas are probably fairly dependent on central Melbourne for employment. Then things start to spread out a bit as you get further from the city, with some median distances to work being largely proportional to distance from the CBD, while many other areas have median distances to work of 10-15km. The linear trend fades away as you get further from Melbourne.

A series of orange dots form a “V” shape either side of 65km from the CBD – these are in the Geelong SA4 area, and central Geelong is around 65 km from Melbourne (straight-line distance). This suggests median distances to work in the Geelong region are largely proportional to distance from central Geelong.

The chart is a bit messy with lots of overlapping dots so let’s simplify things by aggregating to SA2s. For each SA2 I’ve calculated the median straight-line distance to the CBD (of centroids of the SA1s in the SA2), and the weighted average of the median on-road distances to work of the SA1s in the SA2 (weighted by number of workers in each SA1):

You can see more clearly that in Melbourne’s west and north west the median distance to work is roughly proportional to the distance from the CBD, while in Melbourne’s outer east and south east, the median distance doesn’t rise as much with increasing distance from the CBD – suggesting these areas are less dependent on central city jobs with more people working locally.

Melbourne’s commuter towns

The top-right of the above chart shows towns remote from the main Melbourne urbanised area including Bacchus March, Kilmore, Riddells Creek, Gisborne, Kinglake, Eynesbury, Wallan, Melton, Lancefield, Ballan, Kilmore, Romsey, and Woodend. These all have a long median distance to work, suggesting they are fairly dependent on Melbourne for employment.

So let’s go back to the map and focus on towns to the north-west of Melbourne:

Firstly, the regional cities of Ballarat, and Bendigo have quite low median distances to work – suggesting the “median worker” is working locally.

Closer to Melbourne are what you might call commuter towns that I listed above. Basically, at least half of the workers in these towns worked way out of town, the median distance to work not dissimilar to the town’s distance from central Melbourne. Most of these towns have a relatively fast and frequent train service to the Melbourne CBD, which no doubt helps facilitates some such long commutes.

These commuter towns only spread so far out, likely reflecting a limit to how far (or how long) people are prepared to commute. While in most parts of Woodend the “median” worker was a long distance commuter, the median worker in Kyneton (the next town down the line) appears to have worked locally. Broadford was more a mix. The limit appears to be around 70 km straight-line distance from Melbourne’s CBD.

Similarly south east of Melbourne, the small towns of Garfield, Bunyip, Longwarry, Koo Wee Rup and Lang Lang had long median distances to work, but then then Korumburra, Drouin, and Warragul mostly had short median distances, as shown in the following map:

Okay so the median worker is doing a long commute in these towns, but do those distances drop away at lower percentiles? Below is a map showing the 25th percentile distance to work. The commuter towns still have very long distances (although Woodend is now a mix and Broadford comes in around 20 km):

In the mostly red towns, over three-quarters of workers had workplaces a long distance out of town (although of course many may work some or all of their hours from home / remote from their workplace, particularly in the post-pandemic world).

But were these towns actually dependent on central Melbourne jobs?

How dependent are different areas on Melbourne CBD employment?

The next map shows the percentage of workers in each SA2 with a workplace in central Melbourne (defined by a set of SA2s, refer chart).

Technical note: I’ve capped the top end of the colour scale at 40% but the central city itself was higher.

The proportion of workers working in central Melbourne generally declined with distance from the CBD, with relative anomalies in Melbourne’s south west, along the Bendigo rail corridor to the north-west, and in coastal areas south of Melbourne.

The commuter town with the highest share of central Melbourne workers was Woodend at just 14%. This suggests these commuter towns are not so much dependent on central Melbourne, but broader Melbourne for employment, which means a lot of long car journeys to work.

In fact, here is a similar map showing the proportion of workers who worked in Greater Melbourne statistical area:

All home SA2s that are within Greater Melbourne show us as a shade of green (over 60%) – as the many local workers in these SA2s will be classed as working in Greater Melbourne.

The Woodend SA2 comes in with 48% of workers working within Greater Melbourne, which means 34% of Woodend workers had a workplace in Greater Melbourne but outside the central city. In fact around 235 of them worked in nearby Gisborne, Romsey, and Macedon which are included within Greater Melbourne.

Greater Melbourne accounted for 14% of Geelong workers, 6% of Ballarat workers, and just 2% of Bendigo workers. The Lorne-Anglesea SA2 is a relatively anomaly, with 24% of workers working in Greater Melbourne (I wonder if it contained some people working remotely from holiday homes who considered their holiday home to be their “usual residence” at the time of the census, which was a time of COVID lockdown in Melbourne).

You might be wondering why many distances to work were almost directly proportional to the distances to Melbourne for commuter towns, but that only a small proportion worked in central Melbourne. This can be explained in that the distances to work are measured on-road, while I’ve calculated straight-line distances to central Melbourne. The ABS says that on-road distances are typically 30% longer than straight line distances. When I look at origin-destination data I see that many of these workers worked on their home side of the Melbourne CBD.

What about the rest of Victoria?

If we expand the SA2 scatter plot out to include the whole state it looks like this (you might need to click/tap to enlarge to read the labels):

The diagonal pattern at the left of the chart burns out with Kinglake and Bacchus Marsh surrounds (around 70 km from the Melbourne CBD). Most further out towns are along the bottom of the chart – i.e. the median distance to work is very short, probably to a workplace in that town.

However there are some SA2s remote from Melbourne that have relatively long median commuter distances. I’ve looked at the home SA2 to work SA2 volume data and confirmed several are towns (or SA2s) that are within the catchment of a much larger nearby town (or set of towns), as per the table below (which is not exhaustive). They are in effect commuter towns for nearby larger towns.

Small town / SA2Nearby larger town/SA2(s)
BeaufortBallarat
Shepparton Surrounds (including Tatura, Murchison, Merrigum, Tallygaroopna), NumurkahShepparton
TrafalgarWarragul, Moe, and Morwell
RosedaleSale, Traralgon
MaffraSale
PaynesvilleBairnsdale
Yackandanda, Chiltern, TowongWodonga / Albury
Red CliffsMildura
Moyne West / Port FairyWarrnambool
Loddon (including Inglewood and Wedderburn)Bendigo
WinchelseaGeelong

Does distance to work differ by gender?

Inspired by the Gender Equality Toolkit In Transport (with the wonderful acronym GET-IT), I’m going to make more effort to disaggregate transport data by gender (where possible) on this blog. Unfortunately the ABS only provides 2021 census data for binary sex categories, so this will restrict the analysis that can be undertaken.

I’ve calculated the median distance to work by sex for every SA1, but unfortunately it is more susceptible to issues around small counts being randomly adjusted. ABS’s TableBuilder never reports counts of 1 or 2 and this might impact the median distance calculation in SA1s with a smaller number of workers of a sex (particularly women). So there may be some noise in the calculations.

Here’s a side by side comparison of median distance to work around Melbourne (you will probably want to click/tap this to expand):

Both male and female workers show a trend to longer distances in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, but a bit less so for female workers. Indeed the outer suburban areas of Melton, Bacchus March, Sunbury, Wyndham, and Pakenham show a more speckled pattern for female workers, with some SA1s having short median distances and other long median distances.

This variation (or noise) is more evident when I plot the ratio of male to female median distances to work:

In many outer suburban areas (both recent growth and more established) there are SA1s where the male median distance to work is two or three times longer than the female median.

To reduce the noise a bit, I’ve aggregated median distances at SA2 geography (using a weighted average of SA1 median distances), and plotted this against distance from central Melbourne:

The weighted average ratio (grey line) was just above 1 in the central city, and then increased to around 1.2 to 1.3 in the middle suburbs, then grew to almost 1.4 in the outer suburbs and commuter towns. But as you can see there is significant variation between SA2s, and I’ve labelled as many SA2s as possible on the chart. I notice many relatively wealthy areas at the top of the chart, while the bottom of the chart contains many more disadvantaged areas.

Where was there a job / worker imbalance?

We can calculate the ratio of workers to jobs in a region to understand if there is a surplus of workers or jobs. However it is important to keep in mind that around 5% of workers do not have a fixed workplace and will be excluded from the count of jobs, so the average ratio will be around 0.95.

I have done this analysis at SA3 geography as I think SA2s are too small (some include employment areas and many do not) and SA4s are a bit too big.

This chart shows the ratio of workers to jobs for SA3s around Melbourne:

Technical note: this analysis counts only employed persons. You could repeat this analysis including looking for work to understand access (or lack thereof) to opportunities, but that’s another issue.

As you’d expect there was a big surplus of jobs relative to workers in the central city, with many people commuting into the City of Melbourne. There was also a surplus of jobs in SA3s that contain major employment areas, including Monash, Dandenong, Keilor, and Tullamarine – Broadmeadows (which includes Melbourne Airport).

The grey areas were pretty well balanced including Kingston, Stonnington, and Geelong. Box Hill and Maribyrnong were just below 1.

The orange areas had a large surplus of workers compared to jobs. This generally leads to longer commutes, although a neighbouring region with a surplus of jobs might mean these commutes are not very long. The biggest worker surpluses around Melbourne were in the SA3s of Casey – South, and Manningham – East, Sunbury, and Nillumbik – Kinglake. These areas generally had the longest median commutes as we saw above.

Wyndham and Melton – Bacchus Marsh SA3s in Melbourne’s outer west had slightly higher ratios but they were also a long way from SA3s with surpluses – you needed to travel to Keilor, central Melbourne or Port Melbourne to find an SA3 with a surplus, so this explains the long median distances to work. By comparison, in the outer south-east of Melbourne the Casey – South SA3 had a low ratio but is adjacent to Dandenong which had a surplus of jobs.

What about the worker : job balance in regional Victoria?

There was an even balance of workers and jobs in the major regional cities of Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton, and the Latrobe Valley. In rural areas further away from Melbourne the ratios were 0.9 or 1.

Commute distances by work location

We can also do distance to work analysis for workplace locations. Here are median commute distances by workplace locations around Melbourne:

The longest median commutes were to jobs in:

  • West Melbourne and the Port of Melbourne
  • Fishermans Bend
  • Melbourne Airport
  • a pocket of Werribee South including the Werribee Open Range Zoo
  • some industrial areas in the west
  • the Police Academy in Glen Waverley
  • a pocket of Lalor – West that includes the Melbourne Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market which was relocated from West Melbourne in 2015.

Many of these areas contain blue collar jobs where employees perhaps cannot readily afford to live in nearby housing, and/or there was no immediately adjacent housing areas because of land use segregation.

Then in a lot of residential areas the median distances were relatively short – most jobs being filled by relatively local residents.

Here’s a closeup of central Melbourne:

Most of the CBD had median distances of between 11 and 17 km, while Docklands was mostly a bit longer – between 15 and 22 km (I’m not sure I have a good explanation for that difference).

Curiously the zones around North Melbourne Station, Flinders Street Station, and Southern Cross Station had very long median distances – perhaps including train drivers with a notional workplace address of a central station or train yard who might actually start their day at a stabling yard in the suburbs?

There’s also a block on the corner of La Trobe Street and Spring Street with a 23 km median distance. In 2021 the dominant industries of employment for this block were construction and telecommunications services (with a total of only 376 employees).

I’ve examined data for peri-urban and regional employment areas. Most had median commute distances below 15 km with the exceptions of:

  • Pakenham South West 23km (which is on the edge of the Melbourne metropolitan area)
  • Broadford 17 km (which includes the Mitchell Shire Council offices and a major Nestle factory)
  • Parts of Corio 17 km (which is on the northern edge of Geelong)
  • Tatura 16 km (which might be attracting workers from Shepparton, Mooroopna, and Kyabram)

And for anyone interested, regional areas with relatively long 75th percentile commuter distances were:

  • Warracknabeal 39 km
  • Castlemaine 38 km
  • Broadford 39 km
  • Daylesford 37k
  • Seymour 37 km
  • Kyneton 35 km
  • Beechworth 31 km
  • Warragul South 32 km
  • Wonthaggi 31 km

I hope you’ve found this interesting. In future posts I hope to compare Melbourne to other Australian cities, and look at how distances vary by industry of employment.

Appendix: estimating percentile distances to work

Distance to work is estimated by the ABS looking at the mesh block location of the persons usual residence and workplace address and calculating the shortest on-road distance between these locations. Where a worker does not have a fixed workplace address there is no calculation (about 5% of workers).

The ABS don’t publish the actual distance to work for every worker (that would be too much data and could breach privacy) but workers are banded into distance intervals that are 0.5 km wide up to 3 km, then 1 km wide up to 30 km, then 2km wide up to 80 km, then 5 km wide up to 100 km, and so on.

I’ve extracted a count of employees in each of these intervals, and then looked up the intervals either side of the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile worker. I’ve then used a straight line interpolation between the middle distance of the interval below the percentile and the middle distance of the interval above the percentile to estimate the median distance to work. It’s not perfect but I reckon it would be pretty close to the true value, and the maps show a fairly smooth pattern across the city (except sometimes when disaggregated by sex).

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Posted by chrisloader

How did Perth’s CBD end up with 19% more private transport commuters in 2021?

Sat 3 June, 2023

Note: Since publishing this post, it has come to my attention that Perth’s Fremantle train line was closed on census day in 2021, which may have impacted mode shares in Perth.

ABS census data tells us that Perth’s CBD experienced a massive 19% jump in the number of private transport commuter trips between 2016 and 2021. That’s over 5000 more journeys – mostly as car drivers – and is quite likely to have made traffic congestion worse.

So how did that happen? Where were these extra commuters travelling to? Were there particular changes in the modal mix in different parts of the CBD? Was this growth enabled by a big increase in car parking capacity? And what has been happening to car park pricing?

This post digs a little deeper following my last post that explored the impact of COVID on journey to mode shares in Australian cities in 2021.

A quick recap of overall changes in journey to work in the Perth CBD

Here’s the volume of Perth CBD commuters by main mode, including working at home in 2011, 2016, and 2021:

See my last post for my definition of the Perth CBD. A trip involving any public transport is classed as public, a trip that involves only walking or cycling is classed as active, and any other form of travel is classed as private.

At the 2021 census, Perth was COVID-free with relatively few restrictions on intra-state movement or activity.

Total employment in the CBD grew by a massive 26% from 82,214 in 2016 to 103,944 in 2021. Private transport trips increased by 19%, but because this was less growth than overall employment growth there was actually a commuter mode shift away from private transport of 1.6% (from 36.5% to 34.9%).

The biggest increase in CBD worker volumes was in those who worked at home.

Public transport commuting to the CBD increased by only 85 trips between 2016 and 2021, but still accounted for more trips than private transport.

LATE EDIT: It’s just come to my attention that the Fremantle train line was closed on the day of the 2021 census (10 August), which will have suppressed public transport mode share in the western suburbs.

My last post concluded there was likely a significant mode shift from public transport to remote working. There was some mode shift away from public transport and towards remote working and private transport for some middle age groups, although some of this shift is likely to be a normal trend seen as people age (and become parents). I was unable to identify occupations that saw a substantial mode shift from public transport to private transport, although some occupations saw a lot more private transport growth than public transport growth.

This post now takes that analysis a bit further by looking at spatial variations in the modal mix by workplace location.

Where were the extra private transport commuters working?

Here’s the change in private commuter trips for each destination zone around the Perth CBD:

Note: the circles aren’t always drawn in the middle of each destination zone, aren’t intended to highlight any particular location within each zone, and may not be representative of major car park locations.

There were both increases and decreases around the CBD. I’m going to focus in more detail on the following high-growth destination zones that I’ve arbitrarily named by a dominant building, precinct, or bordering streets:

Most of the zones that saw a big increase in private transport commuter trips also saw a big increase in public transport trips.

Capital Square saw jobs more than triple between 2016 and 2021 as a major new development was completed (including the new Woodside headquarters). It had the largest increase in private transport trips, but even more new trips were by public transport. The development includes five levels of car parking on a fairly large site (at least 659 car parks according to some planning documents). It also saw the largest growth in active transport commuter trips of any destination zone in the Perth CBD.

The zone I have labelled Kings Square (which includes Perth Arena and the new Shell and HBF buildings) saw only slightly more new public transport trips than new private transport trips, despite Perth train station being inside the zone.

The Royal Perth Hospital zone had almost all of its net job growth accounted for by private transport, some of which would have been shift workers. This is consistent with my last post that found a large increase in private transport commuters under the “carers and aids” and “health and welfare support” occupation groups. The hospital is directly adjacent to McIver train station, served by multiple train lines.

One mixed-use block between Terrace Road, Victoria Avenue, Adelaide Terrace, and Hill Street had an increase in private trips and a decrease in public trips. It’s difficult to speculate why this occurred due to the diverse mix of land uses.

The Elizabeth Quay zone saw more growth in private trips than public trips, despite being immediately adjacent to Elizabeth Quay train station. I’ve not been able to identify any large new car parks in the area. Car parks immediately north of the development site were offering $25 all-day car parking at the time of writing which I suspect the average employee might not consider particularly affordable.

The Brookfield Place and Central Park zones mostly saw a big increase in the number of remote workers.

Outside the CBD, the biggest decline in private trips was -1863 in a zone near West Leederville station where the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children closed in 2018 (replaced by the Perth Children’s Hospital in Nedlands).

Where was there a shift from public to private transport?

The following map shows destination zones where there was a decline in public transport trips and an increase in private transport trips (no zones showed the opposite flow):

Just under than half of the destination zones around the Perth CBD saw some sort of net shift to private transport, and most of these were very small numbers. In total these zones account for 492 trips within for my definition of the Perth CBD, about 0.5% of all workers. A net shift from public transport explains less than 10% of the total increase in private transport commuter trips.

This is consistent with analysis in my last post (which disaggregated by birth cohorts and occupations) and again suggests the growth in private trips was broadly in line with the overall growth in CBD employment. It also fits with the hypothesis that the biggest mode shift was from public transport to remote working.

Another way of analysing mode shift is to look the percentage change in private transport mode share by zone:

In the western part of the main CBD area there were many zones with a large mode shift away from private transport, and many of these zones had high employment density.

In fact, the next chart shows how employment density and private transport mode share changed between 2016 and 2021 in the Perth CBD, with the thin end of each ‘comet’ being 2016 and the thick end being 2021 (I’ve arbitrarily named several more destination zones based on major landmarks or surrounding streets).

Note: some destination zones include significant land that is not built up (eg parkland, water bodies, and/or freeway interchanges) and these will have understated employment density. This incudes Convention/Exhibition and Elizabeth Quay.

The dominant pattern is that the zones with high and increasing employment density mostly saw declining private transport mode share, although the “Terrace / Hill / Victoria” block was a standout exception having increasing employment density and increasing private mode share.

How did the CBD absorb so many more car commuters?

It’s hard to know for sure but some possible explanations include:

  • New car parking supply: I’ve already mentioned the Capital Square development that included five levels of parking. Locals might know of other new large CBD car parks, but I’ve struggled to identify any large car parks on Parkopedia or Google Maps that didn’t already exist in 2016. Many new office buildings don’t appear to include large car parks.
  • Perth was in a “mining downturn” in 2016: The Perth CBD only added 1.7k jobs between 2011 and 2016, and there was no significant increase in private commuter trips. According to a Property Council report in August 2016, Perth was experiencing very high office vacancy rates (21.8%) and had been experiencing a decline in office space demand that started around 2013. So it seems quite plausible that car parking supply grew between 2011 and 2016, but commuter parking demand only grew strongly after 2016.
  • Reduced short-term parking demand? Perhaps there has been a decline in demand for short-term parking (through the normalisation of online business meetings) enabling more all-day parking. But I’m just speculating.

Someone reading this from the parking industry might be able to share some insights (please add comments).

What’s been happening to Perth CBD car parking prices?

Like Sydney and Melbourne, Perth has a CBD parking levy – an annual fee collected by government per space. Here’s what’s been happening to the levy prices in real terms:

The parking levy increased substantially in real terms in 2010 and again between 2014-2016, but in recent years has not been keeping up with inflation. Between 2016 and 2021 there was almost no real change in the levy.

So what’s been happening to car park prices?

The City of Perth itself operates a large number of CBD car parks and in 2021/22 parking revenue accounted for 36% of its total income (source: budget 2022-23).

Thanks to the incredible resource that is the Wayback Machine, I’ve been able to dig out prices at their CBD car parks right back to 2001-02. For the sake of manageable analysis I’ve focussed on four relatively large central CBD car parks – Concert Hall (399 spaces), Convention Centre (1428 spaces), Elder Street (1052 spaces) and Pier Street (680 spaces). Here’s how those prices have changed over time, in nominal and real terms:

The 2010 and 2015 jumps in the pricing levy were clearly reflected in retail parking prices.

In real terms, parking prices peaked around 2015-2017 and have been in decline since then. Prices for several car parks were cut substantially in 2017/18 – perhaps as a belated response to a reduction in office commuter demand during the mining downturn. Then parking prices were frozen from 2019 to 2022 – presumably due to the pandemic.

So despite the massive increase in CBD parking demand, the City of Perth reduced – rather than increased – all-day parking prices, and so has probably also missed out on significant additional revenue. This has arguably helped facilitate the big increase in commuter traffic volumes, along with the likely associated urban amenity impacts of more traffic in the CBD.

The City of Perth is a democratic local government so it’s probably not going to behave in an entirely economically rational way when it comes to price setting. Prices are also locked in for each financial year so are much less dynamic. So what have commercial parking operators been doing?

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to use the Internet Archive to find historical commercial car parking prices in the Perth CBD back to 2016. What I can tell you is that “flexi” online parking at the Wilson Parking run Central Park car park has risen from $19 in October 2021 to $26 in May 2023 – suggesting commercial operators are not afraid to change their pricing. That said, the Kings Complex car park (517 Hay Street, near Pier Street) has had no increase in its online daily rate between October 2021 and May 2023 ($18).

So what is Perth’s parking policy?

The current Perth parking policy (2014) states:

“This policy recognises that vehicular access to, from and within central Perth is a critical element in ensuring its continued economic and social viability. It also continues to recognise the need to preserve and enhance the city’s environment. The policy aims to address these needs by supporting the provision of a balanced transport network in order to manage congestion and provide for the efficient operation of the transport network to, from and within the city centre.”

I suspect the term “balanced transport” is indicative of not trying to shift travel towards more sustainable, non-car modes. And I guess it would also be hard for the City of Perth to start discouraging something that generates more than one third of its annual revenue. Although an increase in prices might increase revenue, even if it reduces demand.

Furthermore, the Western Australian government is also continuing to widen Perth’s freeways, in the hope this might reduce traffic congestion. I’m not sure many cities have succeeded with such strategies, but good luck Perth!

Finally…

Wasn’t Perth public transport patronage below pre-pandemic levels in 2021?

I noted above that there were just 85 additional public transport commuters to Perth’s CBD in 2021 compared to 2016. But Perth’s overall public transport patronage in August 2021 was around 22%* below that in August 2016. If the number of CBD public transport commuters didn’t decline, the overall patronage decline must represent a mode shift away from public transport for trips to other destinations and/or for purposes other than travelling to work (and/or a decline in the number of such trips made by any mode).

*August 2016 had one more school weekday and one fewer Sunday than August 2021 which means we cannot directly compare total monthly patronage of the two months but they will be fairly close. It would be much cleaner to compare average school weekday patronage figures between months and years, but unfortunately few agencies publish such numbers (Victoria does now).

1 Comment | Employment density, Mode share, Mode shift, Perth, Pricing, Working at home | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

What can the 2021 census tell us about commuting to work in Australia’s big CBDs during the COVID19 pandemic?

Sun 2 April, 2023

The bustling Central Business Districts (CBDs) of Australia’s biggest cities were the powerhouses of the Australian economy, underpinned by public transport networks that delivered hundreds of thousands of commuters each weekday. But the COVID19 pandemic significantly disrupted CBD commuting. Working remotely from home became not just acceptable, but temporarily mandatory, and public transport patronage crashed during lockdowns.

So what might be the new normal in a post-pandemic work for commuting to our CBDs? Will people shift from public to private transport, driving up traffic congestion? How many – and what sorts of people – might work from home?

This post will try to shed some light on those questions by examining what the 2021 Australian census can tell us about how travel to our CBDs altered during the COVID19 pandemic, particularly the differences between locked-down and COVID-free cities. I’ll look at patterns and trends by age, occupation, and commuting distance. I’ll finish with a look at recent transport indications in Melbourne.

As a transport planner, I’m particularly interested in CBDs as there is a significant contest for market share between public and private transport. Before the pandemic, public transport dominated commuter mode share in the biggest CBDs, and CBDs make up a significant share of all public transport commuter trips.

Reminder: what was happening on Census day 2021

Melbourne and Sydney were in “lockdown” with workers required to work from home if possible. Brisbane was just out of lockdown, and the other cities were pretty much COVID-free, although Adelaide had experienced a short lockdown in July 2021. Here’s a summary of some key metrics (CBD office occupancy data sourced from the Property Council):

*The Property Council reported a figure of 60% for August 2021, but this would have been illegal on 10 August as there was a 50% capacity limit just after lockdown. We don’t know the exact dates when the office occupancy survey was conducted, I can only assume later in that month when restrictions were eased. 47% of CBD employees reported working remotely on census day.

What is a Central Business District?

I think of Central Business Districts as the civic, commercial, and business centre of a city, generally characterised by an area dense employment. Unfortunately the ABS’s SA2 boundaries don’t really align with these areas – especially Perth (pre 2021) and Adelaide where the SA2s covering the CBD also included areas of single-storey semi-detached housing.

So for this analysis I’ve created my own CBD boundaries for Australia’s five largest cities. I’ve selected a set of destination zones that were relatively dense in 2021. I’ve tried for reasonably smooth boundaries, and have tried to avoid under-developed areas that might have cheaper car parking. I’ve then created equivalent sets of 2011 and 2016 destination zones – as similar as possible to the 2021 boundary – with the one exception of the Melbourne CBD from which I have excluded south-western parts of Docklands in 2011 due to low employment densities in that year (much of the land was yet to be developed and instead occupied by surface car parking).

Here are maps of these CBD areas. I’ve transparently shaded the CBD for each census year in a different colour which mostly overlap to show dark green. Purple areas are where boundaries are not identical for all years.

Here are the mode splits for those CBD areas, including those who worked at home:

As you would expect, working at home dominated in locked-down Sydney and Melbourne in 2021, but was also quite common in Brisbane and Adelaide. In COVID-free Perth, working at home only accounted for 15.5% of CBD employees with the other 84.5% attending their workplaces on census day.

Public transport mode shares increased between 2011 and 2016 in all CBDs except Brisbane, but then in 2021 there was a significant shift away from all travelling modes to working at home in all cities.

The working at home share may include people who routinely work from their home in a CBD area. To get some idea about these numbers, I’ve split the worked at home share for 2021 into those who lived inside and outside the CBD:

Only a tiny share of CBD workers worked at home and also lived within the CBD. Some of these will have been working remote from their regular workplace and others will have been routinely working at home (I could try to split these apart with deeper analysis but it doesn’t seem worthwhile with such small numbers).

How did working at home vary by age of CBD workers?

A really interesting finding here is that working at home peaked for those in their early 40s in almost all cities – an age with plenty of parents with child caring responsibilities. Teenagers and those in their early 20s were the least likely to work from home, probably because they were more likely to be in jobs not amenable to working at home (eg retail and hospitality). But perhaps also some younger white collar workers may have preferred to build professional networks by being present in the CBD.

In Adelaide and Perth there was a definite trend that younger commuters were more likely to use public transport, and older commuters more likely to use private transport. This was consistent with all cities in earlier censuses (although this was not the case in Brisbane in 2021).

This got me thinking. The COVID19 pandemic and ~18 month border closure surely had some impact on the age distribution of the CBD workforce.

Indeed, here’s a look at the age composition of CBD workers over time:

Between 2011 and 2016 all cities showed a shift in the age composition towards older employees, perhaps as the cohorts of more highly educated Australians got older, people stay in the workforce until later in life, and/or other changing demographics of our cities.

But in most cities (perhaps not Adelaide) there seemed to be a larger shift towards older workers between 2016 and 2021. I suspect this will reflect fewer recent skilled migrants and international students in 2021.

We know from other analysis (see: Why are younger adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age – part 1)) that younger adults generally have higher rates of public transport use, so the shift in demographics might be favouring a mode shift away from public transport – all other things being equal (which of course they are not). There was mostly a shift towards public transport for CBD workers between 2011 and 2016, so other factors must have had an overriding impact.

How did working at home vary by CBD worker occupation?

I’ve sorted the occupations by overall worked at home share, which was similar across the cities. This list roughly sorts from blue collar to white collar and I haven’t seen any surprises in this chart. I’ll come back to occupations shortly.

How did working at home vary by distance from work?

The following chart shows working at home rates by approximate distance from home to work, for central area workers.

Technical note: For this analysis I’ve used journey to work data disaggregated by home SA2, work SA2, and whether or not workers worked at home. I’ve defined central city areas as collections of SA2s (so different boundaries to my CBD areas). Distances between home and work SA2s are calculated on SA2 centroids then aggregated to ranges.

In all cities there was a general trend to higher rates of working at home for people living further from the central city, although Sydney rates of remote working were high at all distances (the strictness of lockdown probably overriding the impact of commuting distance). This pattern in other cities likely reflects the increased incentive to work from home when you have a longer commute to avoid.

Did COVID lead to a mode shift from public to private transport?

Some transport planners have been concerned that COVID19 might lead to a permanent mode shift from public transport to private transport, probably for two reasons:

  1. A reduction in total commuter demand might make private transport slightly more competitive (eg if parking costs reduce), resulting in a different mode split equilibrium. We can only really test this aspect in Perth and Adelaide as they were COVID-free but with a small but significant share of workers working remotely.
  2. People have a fear of becoming infected by COVID19 on public transport and therefore switch to private transport (although COVID can also spread in workplaces of course). It’s a bit harder to test this as Sydney and Melbourne were in lockdown (movement restrictions no doubt had much more impact than infection fear). Perth, Canberra, and Adelaide were COVID-free, although there might have been a some fear of undetected COVID circulating – and indeed that was probably happening in Canberra which went into lockdown a few days after the census. Brisbane was just out of lockdown with some restrictions remaining so infection fear may have been higher than in Perth and Adelaide. However the level of infection fear in these “COVID-free” cities in 2021 would certainly be less than that in 2022 and 2023 where COVID is known to be circulating in the community (although there’s since been plenty of opportunity to get vaccinated).

The hypothesis I want to test for COVID-free cities is that there was a mode shift from public transport to private transport, alongside the overall mode shift to working at home.

Okay, so what can census data tell us?

Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to know the behaviour change of individuals who had the same home and work locations in 2016 and 2021 without another data source. I don’t have access to the census longitudinal dataset and that might not even have a sufficient sample of CBD workers who didn’t change home or work location between the two censuses.

But I can explore this question by looking at the changes in overall volumes and mode shares, and then drilling down into different age and occupation cohorts.

How much mode shift was there between travelling modes?

Let’s first look at the overall change in mode split of people who did commute to CBDs in the last three-four censuses (I have 2006 data for Melbourne and Sydney, but only for those who travelled):

On this split, all cities saw a significant mode shift to private transport travel in 2021. The smallest was 4% in COVID-free Perth, while the largest was 18% in locked-down Sydney.

To explore further, here are the total volumes of commuters to CBDs for each mode, across the last three-four censuses:

In the locked-down cities there was a substantial drop in both public and private transport commuters in 2021, although a larger proportional drop for public transport (in line with mode shifts seen above).

But I’m particularly interested in the then COVID-free cities of Adelaide and Perth, that exhibited COVID-free travel behaviour. Let’s start with a deep dive for Perth.

How did commuting behaviour change for Perth CBD commuters between 2016 and 2021?

The overall CBD workforce increased substantially from 83.0k to 105.7k, and this increase saw 5,164 more private transport trips, and about 85 more public transport trips. But the biggest net increase was for working at home.

If we include remote working, the overall mode share of private transport declined by 1.6% from 36.5% to 34.9%. Any mode shift from public transport to private transport was swamped by the overall shift to working remotely.

But does the overall pattern mask some mode shifts within age or occupation groups?

Did some age groups shift modes more than others? Initially for this analysis I started to look at the change in modal mix by five year age group, but of course the people within these 5 year age bands entirely change between censuses (that are held five years apart), so that wouldn’t be measuring behaviour change of a similar group of people.

Instead I’ve looked at the change in modal mix by approximate birth year cohorts (we only know people’s age in August, so the birth year groups are approximate – for example someone aged 25 at the 2021 census could have been born anytime between 11 August 1995 and 10 August 1996, but I’ve allocated them to the 1996 to 2000 cohort).

Here is the net change in volume of Perth CBD workers by birth year cohort and commuter mode (I’ve included the age of this cohort in 2021 at the bottom of the chart for reference).

As you would expect, people aged in their 20s in 2021 made up a significant share of new CBD employees, and workers aged 60+ in 2021 (55+ in 2016) had a net reduction as many went into retirement.

Public transport had the largest share of net new trips for those aged 20-24 in 2021, although a substantial share also travelled by private transport. There was a more even split of net new trips for those aged 25-29 in 2021.

There was also substantial employee growth for people aged 30+ in 2021 (unlike in 2016), and for those aged 30-54 in 2021 the biggest change was a net increase in working at home.

There were increases in private transport use and decreases in public transport use for those aged 30 to 54 in 2021. This was a net 2270* commuters – about 2.1% of the overall CBD workforce (*summing the absolute values of the smaller of the public or private transport shift). But the overall private transport mode shift was -1.6% so changes in other age groups (particularly young adults) washed out all of this shift of middle-aged workers.

Was this mode shift for middle aged workers something to do with COVID, or was it something that was destined to happen anyway? On this blog I’ve explored the relationship between age and public transport mode share in great detail, and there’s certainly a pattern of decline with age, particularly as people become parents. See: Why are younger adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age) – part 1, part 2, and part 3.

What about mode changes for different occupations? Here’s a look at commuter volume changes by mode and occupation for Perth’s CBD:

The Perth CBD put on a lot more professionals and specialist managers between 2016 and 2021, and working at home accounted for most of this net growth. The number of new public and private trips varied considerably by category but private transport growth outnumbered public transport growth for most professions.

In particular, almost all the growth in health professionals, protective service workers, and carers and aides was accounted for by private transport. These are occupations where working remotely from home is often difficult, and the high rates of private transport growth might also reflect significant rates of shift work where off-peak public transport service levels are often less competitive with private transport.

There are not many occupations that saw a net shift from public to private transport – these included office managers, program administrators, and clerical and office support workers. But again these numbers were tiny compared to the size of the Perth CBD workforce – suggesting there was very little net shift from public to private transport.

Overall there was a 1.6% shift away from private transport commuting to the Perth CBD, with most of the other mode shift being from public transport to remote working. The evidence from Perth does not support the hypothesis.

How did commuting behaviour change for Adelaide CBD commuters?

Adelaide saw only a tiny increase in the number of private transport commuters, but a significant decrease in the number of people who travelled on public transport. Overall there was a 5.3% shift away from private transport mode share (when you include remote working).

As per the analysis for Perth, here’s the change in volume of trips by mode and birth year:

For Adelaide most of the net mode shift also appears to be from public transport to working remotely. There was a net increase in private transport commuting for people aged 15 to 34 in 2021, and a small decline in private transport trips for older age groups.

There was only a tiny net shift from public to private transport of 526 people within those aged 30-39 in 2021.

Like Perth, working at home accounted for a smaller share of the employment growth for younger adults.

Here’s a look at occupations for Adelaide:

Again, the biggest mode shift here appears to have been from public transport to working at home, with the notable exception again of carers and aides, and health professionals (although small numbers). In most occupations there was also a mode shift away from private transport. Very few occupations show a net shift from public transport to private transport in Adelaide.

The evidence of Adelaide does not support the hypothesis of mode shift from public to private transport. The biggest change was a mode shift from public transport to remote working (plus some mode shift from private transport to remote working).

How did the mix of CBD car commuters change?

Yet another way of looking at potential mode shifts is whether the people driving to work in the CBD in 2021 were any different to previous censuses. For this analysis I’ve filtered for commuters to CBDs who did not use any public transport, but did travel as a vehicle driver or on motorbike/scooter (you might argue “Truck” should be included as well, but we don’t know whether there people were drivers or passengers and the numbers are tiny so I don’t think it is material).

Firstly here is the occupation split of vehicle drivers to work in the five CBDs over the last three censuses:

In most cities, there was a noticeable change in occupation share between 2016 and 2021 towards technicians and trade, labourers, machinery operators and drivers, and community and personal service workers, and away from professionals and managers. Basically a shift from white collar to blue/fluoro collar jobs, as many white collar workers shifted to working remotely. This shift was largest in the locked down cities of Melbourne and Sydney, but was also visible in Adelaide and Brisbane to a lesser extent.

It is also interesting to look at the change in volumes. Note the Y-axis on the following chart has an independent scale for each occupation group, with the biggest occupation groups at the top:

In locked-down Sydney and Melbourne, there was a massive decrease in white collar workers and an increase in machinery operators and drivers. Melbourne also saw an increase in labourers and community and personal service workers. This might reflect a reduction in car parking prices, although I cannot find evidence that prices were actually lower on census day (the City of Melbourne waived parking fees and restrictions from just after the census).

Diving deeper, there was a big increase in protective service workers in the Melbourne CBD, and about 2166 of them drove to work in 2021 (up from 1660 in 2016). This may reflect the opening of the new Victorian Police Centre in Spencer Street in 2020, complete with 600 car parks. Indeed the destination zone that includes this building (and Southern Cross Station) saw an increase of 769 private transport commuters between 2016 and 2021, the biggest increase of any CBD destination zone.

In COVID-free Perth there was an increase in professionals, clerical and administrative workers, managers, community and personal service workers, and machinery operators and drivers who drove to work, and there was only a decline in sales workers.

So what have I learnt from the latest census data?

I’ve covered a bit of ground, so here’s a summary of key findings and some discussion:

  • Locked-down Sydney and Melbourne saw a significant shift to remote working of CBD employees in 2021. COVID-free CBDs saw much less shift to remote working (Adelaide 24% and Perth 15%).
  • Remote working was most common for middle-aged CBD employees (peaking at 40-44 age bracket), and much lower for younger adults and a little less common for older employees.
  • All CBDs saw a step change in the workforce age composition between 2016 and 2021, shifting to an older workforce, probably related to the halt to immigration during the pandemic.
  • In most cities, remote working in 2021 was slightly more common for CBD employees who lived further from their CBD.
  • In all cities, the main mode shift between 2016 and 2021 seems to be from public transport to remote working.
  • No city saw a net mode shift from public transport to private transport (when you include remote working in the modal mix). The main mode shift in COVID-free cities appears to be from public transport to remote working. However it is entirely possible that some public transport commuters switched to private transport, but this was more than offset by other commuters who shifted from private transport to remote working. Few age or occupation cohorts saw a net shift from public to private transport.
  • The only CBD to see a significant increase in private transport commuter trips was Perth (with +5164). However this was still a net mode shift away from private transport mode share due to massive growth in overall CBD employment between 2016 and 2021. I’m curious about how this happened, and I will explore it further in an upcoming post.
  • Occupations likely to include many shift workers saw the biggest net private transport commuter growth in Adelaide and Perth – including health professionals, protective service workers (including police), carers, and aids.

So what can we expect in a “post-pandemic” world?

At the 2021 census all Australian cities were either in lockdown or were perceived to be COVID-free. No Australian cities were “living with COVID”, and in the cities with COVID circulating, few workers faced a choice between workplace attendance and remote working.

At the time of writing (March 2023), COVID is circulating across Australia and there are very few restrictions to restrict spread. There is an ongoing risk of COVID infection when using public transport and attending an indoor workplace (although you can choose to wear a mask of course).

Is this leading to a mode shift from public to private transport in this “post-pandemic” world? Have we even reached a new steady state? The best data to answer this will come from the 2026 census.

In the meantime I have had a quick look at some transport indicators for Melbourne.

Vehicle traffic through CBD intersections in 2022 (excluding Q1) was consistently below 2019 levels in the AM peak in most parts of the CBD. However it’s only a rough indication as much of this traffic will be for purposes other than private transport commuting to the CBD (eg deliveries, through-traffic, buses, etc) (I’ve excluded signals on Wurundjeri Way which is likely to have much through-traffic).

The next chart shows average daily patronage for metropolitan trains, trams, and buses in Melbourne based on published total monthly patronage data but not taking into account the different day type compositions of months between years (I’d much prefer to use average school weekday patronage data to avoid calendar effects, but that data series only ran as far as June 2022 at the time of writing).

This data suggests CBD private transport commuter volumes in 2022 might be a bit below 2019 levels, while there has been a substantial reduction in public transport commuting. This is consistent with what was seen in Adelaide in the 2021 census – mostly a mode shift from public transport to remote working. Furthermore, if there has been a significant increase in Melbourne CBD employment, private transport mode share (when you include remote working) is more likely to have declined below 2019 levels.

Is infection fear still influencing mode choice?

The largest COVID wave in Victoria (so far at the time of writing) occurred in January 2022 peaking at 1229 people in hospital and there was significant public transport patronage suppression (well beyond the usual summer holiday lull) as many people choose to stay home (or were sick and had to stay home). Infection fear was probably having a big impact, as I recall there were few restrictions regarding workplace attendance.

There was also a fairly large COVID wave in winter 2022 peaking at 906 hospitalisations in July, but the above chart shows no significant associated reduction in public transport patronage. This suggests infection fear was probably having a very small impact on transport behaviour in mid-2022.

Certainly in my experience few people are wearing masks on Melbourne’s public transport at the time of writing, but maybe a cautious minority have still not returned to the network.

Emerging indications are that public transport patronage is returning even more strongly in February and March 2023, which might reflect even lower levels of infection fear (hospitalisation numbers have also reached the lowest numbers since September 2021), and/or it might reflect a surge in population growth and CBD employment/student numbers. Things to keep an eye on over time!

Leave a Comment » | Australian Cities, Brisbane, Melbourne, Migration, Mode share, Mode shift, Road Traffic, Sydney, Working at home | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

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