How is population density changing in Australian cities? (2023 update)

Sat 10 June, 2023

With the release of more detailed 2021 census data and June 2022 population estimates, it’s now possible to look more closely at how Australia’s larger capital cities have changed, particularly following the onset of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020.

This post examines ABS population grid data for 2006 to 2023 for Greater Capital City Statistical Areas, including:

  • Trends in overall population-weighted density for cities;
  • Changes in the distribution of population living at different densities;
  • Changes in the distribution of population living at different distances from each city’s CBD;
  • Changes in population density by distance from each city’s CBD;
  • Changes in the distribution of population living at different distances from train and busway stations;
  • Changes in population density in areas close to train and busway stations;
  • The population density of “new” urban residential areas in each city (are cities sprawling at low density?); and
  • Changes in the size of the urban residential footprint of cities.

I’ve also got some animated maps showing the density of each city over those years, and I’ve had a bit of a look at how the ABS corrected population estimates for 2007 to 2021 following the release of 2021 census data.

For some other detailed analysis – and a longer history of city population density – see How is density changing in Australian cities? (2nd edition).

I’ve not included the smaller cities of Hobart and Darwin as they have a small footprint, and too many grid cells are on the edge of an urban area.

Population weighted density

My preferred measure of city density is population-weighted density, which takes a weighted average of the density all statistical areas in a city, with each area weighted by its population (this stops lightly populated rural areas pulling down average density – for more discussion see How is density changing in Australian cities? (2nd edition)).

I also prefer to calculate this measure on a consistent statistical area geography and the only consistent statistical area geography available for Australia is the square kilometre population grid published by the ABS.

With the recent release of 2021 census data, ABS issued revised population grid estimates for all years from 2017 onwards, which saw significant corrections in some cities (see appendix for more details). There has also been a slight change in the methodology for the 2021 grid that ABS say may result in a more ‘targeted representation’, but it’s unclear what that means.

Here’s the revised trend in population weighted density calculated on square km grid geography for Greater Capital City Statistical Areas in June of each year:

Sydney has almost double the population density of most other Australian cities (on this measure), with the exception being Melbourne which sits halfway in between.

Population weighted density was rising in all cities until 2019, although the growth was notably slowing in Sydney from about 2016.

The pandemic hit in March 2020 and led to a flatlining of density in Melbourne and a decline in Sydney by June 2020, while other cities continued to densify. Then Sydney and Melbourne’s population weighted density dropped considerably in the year to June 2021 – probably a combination an exodus of temporary international migrants and internal migration away from the big cities (particularly Melbourne that had experienced long lockdowns). Most other cities flatlined between June 2020 and June 2021.

Then by June 2022 density had increased again in all cities, after international borders reopened in early 2022.

I expect some fairly substantial changes between June 2022 and June 2023 in some cities as migration has surged further and rental vacancy rates have plummeted in several cities.

Population living at different densities

The following chart shows the proportion of the population in each city living at different density ranges over time:

All cities show a sustained pre-pandemic trend towards more people living at higher densities. However the pandemic saw significant drops in people living at the higher density categories in 2021 in Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra.

So where was this loss of density? The next chart shows the change in population for grid squares across Melbourne between June 2020 and June 2021. Larger dots are more change, blue is an increase and orange is a decline:

You can see significant declines in population (and hence population density) in the inner city areas – so much so that the dots overlap. This is likely largely explained by the exodus of many international students and other temporary migrants.

You can also see population decline around Monash University’s Clayton campus in the south-eastern suburbs.

At the same time there were large increases in population in the outer growth areas, as is normally the case. Other pockets of population growth include Footscray, Moonee Ponds, Box Hill, Port Melbourne, Clayton (M-City), and Doncaster, likely related to the completion of new residential towers.

Here’s the same for Sydney:

There was significant population decline in the inner city and around Kensington (which has a major university campus), and the largest growth was seen in urban fringe growth areas to the north-west and south-west. Pockets of population growth were also seen at Wentworth Point, Eastgardens, Mascot, North Ryde, and Mays Hill, amongst others.

Here is the same for Brisbane:

Inner-city Brisbane was much more a mixed bag, which explains the less overall change in the density composition of the city. Some areas showed declines (including St Lucia, New Farm, Kelvin Grove, Coorparoo) while others saw increases (including Fortitude Valley, West End, South Brisbane, Buranda, CBD south).

Proportion of population living at different distances from the city centre

The next chart shows the proportion of people living at approximate distance bands from each city’s CBD over time:

All cities have seen a general trend towards more of their population living further from the CBD, with the notable exception of Canberra which has seen the outer urban fringe expanding by little more than a couple of kilometres at the most, and substantial in-fill housing at major town centres and the inner city (see also animated density map below). I should note that the Greater Capital City Statistical Area boundary for Canberra is simply the ACT boundary, and does not include the neighbouring NSW urban area of Queanbeyan, which is arguably functionally part of “greater Canberra”.

In 2021, Sydney and Melbourne saw a step change towards living further out, in line with the sudden reduction in central city population.

Population density by distance from a city’s CBD

Here’s an animated chart showing how population weighted density has varied by distance from each city’s CBD over time:

In most cities there has been a trend to significantly increasing density closer to the CBD, with central Melbourne overtaking central Sydney in 2017.

Sydney has maintained significantly higher density than all other cities at most distances from CBDs, with Melbourne a fair step behind, then most other cities flatten out to around 20-26 persons/ha from around 6+km out from their CBDs in 2022.

Canberra appears to flatten out to around 20 persons/ha at 3-4 kms from its CBD (Civic) however it is important to note that Canberra has a lot of non-residential land relatively close to Civic which reduces density for many grid cells that are on an urban fringe (refer maps toward the end of this post).

Population living near rapid transit stations

I’ve been maintaining a spatial data set of rapid transit stations (train and busway stations) including years of opening and closing, and from this it’s possible to assess what proportion of each city lives close to stations:

Sydney has the largest proportion of it’s population living quite close to rapid transit stations, with Perth having the lowest.

There are step changes on this chart where new train lines have opened. Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide have been successful at increasing population close to stations. The opening of the Mandurah rail line made a big difference in Perth in 2009 but the city has been growing remote from stations since then (MetroNet projects will probably turn this around significantly in the next few years). Melbourne was roughly keeping the same proportion of the population close to stations although that changed in 2021 with the exodus of inner city residents (I anticipate a substantial correction in 2023).

Population density around rapid transit stations

The following animated chart shows the aggregate population-weighted density for areas around rapid transit stations in the five biggest cities over time:

Sydney has lead Australia with higher densities around train stations, followed by Melbourne. Perth has only slightly higher densities around stations (in aggregate) compared to other parts of the city. Population density is generally lower around Adelaide train and busway stations compared to the rest of the city – the antithesis of transit orientated development.

How dense are new urban areas?

I’ve previously looked at the density of outer urban growth areas on my blog, and here is another way of looking at that using square kilometre grid data.

I’ve attempted to identify new urban residential grid squares by filtering for squares that averaged less than 5 persons per hectare in 2006 and more than 5 persons per hectare in 2022 (using 5 persons/ha as an arbitrary threshold for urban residential areas, and I think that’s a pretty low threshold).

The vast bulk of these grid cells (and associated population) are on the urban fringe, but a handful in each city are brownfield sites that were previously non-residential (for Melbourne 99% of the population of these grid cells are in urban fringe areas).

It’s also not perfect because square kilometre grid cells will often contain a mix of residential and non-residential land uses, but it is analysis that can be done easily and quickly, and in aggregate I expect it will be broadly indicate of overall patterns.

The following chart shows the population of new urban residential grid cells (since 2006), and the proportion of this population by 2022 population density:

You can see Melbourne has almost double the population in these new urban residential grid squares compared to Perth, Brisbane, and Sydney. This indicates Melbourne has been sprawling more than any other city since 2006. Slow-growing Adelaide only put on about 56k people in new urban grid squares, slightly less than Canberra.

The bottom half of the chart shows that new urban grid squares in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra are generally much more dense than those in other cities. This likely reflects planning policies for higher residential densities in new urban areas in those cities. In fact, all of these grid cells with density 40+ in 2022 are on the urban fringes, except one brownfield cell in Mascot (Sydney).

But of course planning policies can change over time, so here is the equivalent chart looking at new urban residential squares since 2012:

It’s not a lot different. The density of these more recent new urban residential grid cells is generally highest in Sydney, following by Melbourne and Canberra. New urban residential grid cells in Adelaide mostly had fewer than 20 persons/ha, but then also there are not that many such grid cells and they didn’t have much population in 2022.

Perth has managed one new grid cell with over 40 persons/ha in 2022 – it is located in Piara Waters (which has many single storey houses with tiny backyards).

How much has the urban footprint of cities been expanding?

The population grid data only measures residential population so it cannot be used to estimate the size of the total urban footprint of cities over time, but we can use it to estimate the urban residential footprint. I’ve again used 5 persons/ha as a threshold, and here’s how the cities have growth since 2006:

Melbourne and Sydney had much the same footprint in 2006 but Melbourne has since grown significantly larger in size than Sydney, although Sydney still has a larger Capital City Statistical Area population.

The bottom half of the chart shows that Perth has had the largest percentage growth in urban residential area, followed by Brisbane then Melbourne. Sydney and Adelaide have had the least growth in footprint, and are also seeing the least population growth in percentage terms.

Animated density maps of Australian cities

Here are some animated density maps for Australia’s six largest cities from 2006 to 2022 for you to ponder.

Some things to watch for:

  • Limited urban sprawl and significant densification of pockets of established areas in Canberra
  • Much larger areas of higher density in Sydney and Melbourne
  • Relatively high densities in some urban growth areas in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney from the late 2010s
  • Low density sprawl in Perth, but also densification of some inner suburban areas (along the Scarborough Beach Road and Wanneroo Road corridors, and inner suburbs like Subiaco and North Perth)
  • Limited urban sprawl in Adelaide, along with densification of inner suburbs

Appendix: Corrections to ABS population estimates following Census 2021

The 2021 census resulted in quite large revisions to estimated population in many cities as shown in the following chart.

Melbourne’s estimated 2021 population was revised down 2.4%, Sydney down 1.9%, while Canberra and Hobart were revised up more than 5%. To be fair to the ABS, the pandemic and border closures were unprecedented and their impacts on regional population were not easy to predict.

These corrections sum to a linear trend between 2016 and 2021 at the city level, although there was a redistribution of the estimated population within each city.

The following chart shows some detail of estimated population revisions at SA2 level for Melbourne in 2021:

The biggest reduction was in Carlton (-25% right next to University of Melbourne), and there were also reductions near other university campuses, including Kingsbury (-19%), Burwood (-14%) and Clayton (-13%). The biggest upwards revision was Fishermans Bend (+84%), and there were plenty of upwards revisions in outer urban growth areas.

And here is Sydney:

There were big reductions in Kensington (-28%, centred on UNSW), Redfern-Chippendale (-17%), many other areas near university campuses, and around the Sydney CBD.

Like Melbourne, urban growth areas on the fringe were revised upwards, including +35% in Riverstone-Marden Park.

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

How and why does driver’s licence ownership vary across Sydney?

Sat 27 February, 2021

In a recent post I confirmed the link between driver’s licence ownership and public transport use at the individual level in Melbourne:

Unfortunately, spatial data around driver’s licence ownership is quite scarce in Australia, so not a lot is known about the spatial variations of licence ownership, nor what might explain them.

However, Transport for New South Wales do publish quarterly licensing statistics at the postcode level, and so this post takes a closer look at the patterns and possible demographic explanations of driver licence ownership across Sydney. I’ll also touch on the relationship between licence ownership and journey to work mode shares.

I have measured rates of licence ownership at the postcode level, and then compared these with other demographic factors that have shown to be significant in explaining variations in public transport mode shares in Melbourne (see my series on “Why are young adults more likely to use public transport”, parts 1, 2, and 3). These factors include socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, workplace location, age, recency of immigration, educational attainment, parenting status, motor vehicle ownership, population weighted density, proximity to high quality public transport, English proficiency, and student status.

I’m sorry it’s not a short post, but I have put some less profound analysis in appendices.

About the data

To calculate licence ownership rates you need counts of licences and population for geographic areas for the same point in time (or very close). Estimates of postcode population are only available from census data, so for most of the following analysis, I’ve combined 2016 “quarter 2” driver’s licence numbers (which includes learner permits) with (August) 2016 ABS census population counts. This is of course pre-COVID19, and patterns may (or may not) have changed since then.

I’ve mostly used population counts for persons aged 16-84. Obviously there are people over the age of 84 with licences, but I am attempting to discount people who may lose their eligibility to hold a licence due to aging.

I’ve also mapped postcodes to the Greater Sydney Greater Capital City Statistical Area boundary, and filtered for postcodes with a significant region within the Greater Sydney boundary (note that the boundaries do not perfectly align).

How does driver’s licence ownership vary across Sydney?

Here’s a map showing 2016 licence ownership rates for Sydney postcodes, with red signifying very high ownership, and green very low.

Technical note: For this map I have filtered to only show postcodes averaging at least 3 persons per hectare to focus on urban Sydney, but some excluded postcodes will be a mix of urban and non-urban land use so this is imperfect. Postcodes are not a great spatial geography for analysis as they vary significantly in size, but unfortunately that’s how the data is published (much easier for TNSW to extract I am sure).

The lowest licence ownership rates can be seen in and around the Sydney CBD, around major university campuses (especially UNSW/Randwick, Macquarie Park, University of Sydney/Camperdown), and at Silverwater (which includes a large Correctional Complex – inmates probably don’t renew their licence and would have a hard time gaining one!). There are also relatively low rates in some inner southern suburbs, in and near Parramatta, and near Sydney Airport.

Most outer urban postcodes have very high levels of licence ownership. One exception is postcode 2559 in the outer south-west, which contains a large public housing estate in the suburb of Claymore. More on that shortly.

Is there a relationship between licence ownership and journey to work transport mode share?

It will probably surprise no one that there was a relationship between driver’s licence ownership and private transport mode share of journeys to work. The following chart shows the average postcode mode share for the commuter population within specified bands of driver’s licence ownership.

I should point out that this a relationship, but not necessarily direct causality (either way). People might be more likely to get a driver’s licence because that is the only practical way to get work from where they live, and other people who do not want to – or cannot – get a driver’s licence may be able to choose to live and work in places that don’t require private transport to get to work.

And then there are some postcodes with pretty much saturated driver’s licence ownership but less than 60% private transport journey to work mode shares (top right). I’ll have more to say on these postcodes shortly.

The rest of this post will consider potential explanations for the spatial patterns of licence ownership, using demographic data for postcodes.

Socio-economic advantage and disadvantage

The following chart compares licence ownership with ABS’s Index of Socio-economic relative advantage and disadvantage (ISRAD, part of SEIFA), at the postcode level:

Near-saturated licence ownership was more common in the more advantaged postcodes, but lower rates of licence ownership were seen in postcodes in deciles 1, 7, and 8. Decile 1 stands to reason as areas of disadvantage (probably including many people unable to get a driver’s licence, eg due to disability), and the postcodes with very low licence ownership rates in deciles 7 and 8 contain or are adjacent to major university campuses.

However there are postcodes with licence ownership rates below 80 in all deciles – the relationship here is not super-strong and there are many exceptions to the pattern.

For people less familiar with the demographics of Sydney, here is a map showing 2016 ISRAD deciles for Sydney postcodes. Note that these deciles are calculated relative to the entire New South Wales population, and Sydney overall is more advantaged than the rest of the state, hence more green areas than red.

Workplace location

Workplace location is a known major driver of commuter mode share, with people working in the CBD much more likely to commute by public or active transport (see Why are younger adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age – part 2, plus analysis below). So how does it compare with licence ownership?

Here’s a scatter plot that shows that relationship. I’ve added socio-economic advantage and disadvantage colouring for further context, and labelled selected outlier and cloud-edge postcodes (unfortunately there is a slight bias against labelling postcodes containing many suburbs).

There is perhaps a weak relationship between work in Sydney CBD percentage and licence ownership, with postcodes containing larger shares of commuters going to the CBD (30%+) having lower licence ownership.

The chart also shows that disadvantaged postcodes generally had both fewer CBD commuters (as a proportion) and lower rates of licence ownership.

Commuter mode shares were much more strongly related to workplace location than licence ownership, as the following chart shows. Note that for this chart colour indicates licence ownership rate.

Within the main cloud, postcodes with lower rates of licence ownership (shades of orange) had slightly lower private transport mode shares and/or slightly lower percentage of commuters heading to the CBD. The upper outliers from the cloud include many wealthy postcodes that were not well connected to the CBD by the train network, while postcodes in the bottom-left of the cloud are on the train network.

To explore that further, here’s a similar chart, but with the data marks coloured by a relatively blunt measure: whether or not the postcode contained a train or busway station (based on point locations for stations, which is not perfect as some postcodes are very large and only part of the area might be within reach of a station, while other postcodes might have a station just outside the area):

Generally the postcodes with a train or busway station are towards the bottom-left of the cloud, and those without towards the top-right. I’ve labelled a few exceptions, which include university suburbs such as Macquarie Park, Kensington, Camperdown, and some larger postcodes where a station only serves a minority of the postcode area (eg 2027 and 2069).

The next chart plots commuter mode shares, licence ownership, and socio-economic advantage/disadvantage:

You can see a significant – but not tight – relationship between licence ownership and commuter mode share. Within the main cloud, disadvantaged postcodes are to the top-left, and the more advantaged postcodes to the bottom-right. That is, many disadvantaged postcodes had high private transport mode share despite lower licence ownership, and many more advantaged areas had lower private mode share despite higher licence ownership.

This suggests licence ownership was not the strongest driver of commuter mode choice, at least at the postcode level. Workplace location seems far more influential.

Many advantaged areas are closer to CBD(s) and often have higher quality public transport, walking, and cycling options. People in more advantaged areas are also more likely to work in well-paying jobs in the central city, where public transport is a more convenient and affordable mode. These people also probably face fewer barriers in obtaining a driver’s licence for when they do want to drive (eg access to a car).

While disadvantaged postcodes generally had lower rates of licence ownership, fewer people in these postcodes worked in the Sydney CBD, and they also tended to have high private transport commuter mode shares. I suspect this may be related to many lower income workplace locations being generally less accessible by public transport (particularly jobs in industrial areas). Any cost advantage of public transport is less likely to offset the relatively high convenience of private transport (not to suggest the design quality of public transport services is not important, and not to go into the issues of capital v operating cost of private transport).

However, I suspect public transport could be more competitive for travel from these disadvantaged low-licence-ownership areas to local schools and activity centres. I am aware of some disadvantaged areas of Melbourne that have highly productive bus routes, but not necessarily high public transport mode shares of journeys to work (particularly parts of Brimbank). These areas may be worth targeting for all-day public transport service upgrades, to contribute to both patronage growth and social inclusion objectives.

Just to round this out, here’s a very similar chart, but with Sydney CBD commuter percentage used for colour:

For most rates of licence ownership, there was a wide range of private transport mode shares and a wide range of Sydney CBD commuter percentages. There is a relationship between licence ownership and mode share, but it is not nearly as tight as the relationship between Sydney CBD commuter percentage and mode share.

Age

There’s obviously a relationship between age and licence ownership and NSW thankfully publishes detailed data on licence ownership by individual age. The following chart shows licence ownership by age, animated over time from 2005 to 2020.

Licence ownership peaks for ages around 35-70, and is lower for younger adults and tails off for the elderly as people become less capable of driving.

But there is a very curious dip in licence ownership around age 23-24, which became more pronounced after around 2008. Why might this be?

One hypothesis: People getting learner’s permits around age 18 but not progressing to a full licence and having their learner’s permit expire after 5 years – i.e. around age 22 or 23. I wonder whether people are getting a learner’s permit largely for proof of age purposes. NSW does have a specific Photo Card you can get for that, but the fee is $55 (or $5 at the time you get your driver’s licence), whereas a learner’s permit costs just $25 (and an Australia Post Keypass proof of age card costs $40). As of September 2020, there were 185,329 people aged 18-25 with a Photo Card, and 211,004 people aged 16-25 with a learner’s permit (unfortunately data isn’t available for perfectly aligning age ranges). Did something change about proof of age in 2008? I don’t live in Sydney but maybe locals could comment further on this?

However, I think I have uncovered a more likely explanation which I’ll discuss in the next section.

It would stand to reason that postcodes with more people in age ranges with lower licence ownership might have lower rates of licence ownership overall. I’ve calculated the ratio of the population aged 35-69 (roughly the peak licence-owning age range for 2016) to the population aged 15-84 (roughly the age range of most licence holders) for all postcodes to create the following chart:

You can see a very strong relationship between age make-up and licence ownership rates for postcodes (a linear regression gives an R-squared of 0.75). That is, the more the population skews to people aged 35-69, generally the higher the licence ownership rate.

Recent immigrants

My previous analysis found a strong relationship between public transport use and recency of immigration to Australia (see: Why were recent immigrants to Melbourne more likely to use public transport to get to work?). So does a similar relationship apply for licence ownership?

While I cannot directly match licence ownership and immigrant status at the individual level, I can compare these measures at the postcode level.

For the following chart I have classified postcodes by the percentage of residents who arrived between 2006 and 2016 – as at the 2016 census (my arbitrary definition of “recent immigrants” based on available data for this analysis), and compared that with licence ownership levels.

This chart shows a fairly strong relationship, and suggests more recent immigrants were less likely to have a driver’s licence – although the relationships is weaker for more disadvantaged postcodes (red/orange postcodes).

So why might recent immigrants be less likely to have a licence?

  • As we’ve already seen, some of these postcodes with low licence ownership are adjacent to universities, and no doubt included many international students who did not have a need for licence to get to study or work.
  • Many other skilled immigrants would work in the CBD(s), for which high quality public transport connections are generally available. In Melbourne, I found many recent immigrants live closer to the city where public transport is more plentiful, and many also live near train stations. Sydney is likely to be similar (more on that in a moment).
  • For some it might be because they cannot (yet) afford private transport (particularly immigrants on humanitarian visas) and/or that they don’t have sufficient English to get a learner’s permit (more on that later).
  • For some it might be that they are happy and attuned to using public transport, walking and/or cycling to get around, like they did in their country of origin. However when I analysed Melbourne commuter PT mode shares by immigrant country of origin, I didn’t find relationships I expected.
  • The age profile of immigrants skew towards younger adults, who for various reasons are less likely to own a driver’s licence.
  • I had wondered if some immigrants were driving using international licences instead, but NSW rules state that you can only drive on an international licence for up to three months, so that’s unlikely to explain the pattern.

Here’s a chart showing that immigrants skew towards young adults. The chart shows the New South Wales 2011 population for each calculated approximate age of immigrants when they arrived in Australia (= age + arrival year – 2011) (the best data I have available at present):

The most common ages at arrival were around 23-25 years. Sound familiar? It is also the age where driver’s licence ownership rates dip in New South Wales. I reckon there’s a good chance the influx of immigrants of this age may explain the dip in licence ownership rates for people in their early 20s.

My recent Melbourne research found recent immigrants were also less likely to own a motor vehicle. This evidence suggests low rates of driver’s licence ownership is also strongly related to the relatively high use of public transport by recent immigrants.

For reference, here’s a map showing the percentage of residents in 2016 who had moved to Australia between 2006 and 2016. If you know a little about the urban geography of Sydney, you’ll see higher concentrations around the CBDs, university campuses, and along some major train lines.

Parenting status

We know parents are less likely to use public transport (at least in Melbourne, but probably in all Australian cities), so are they also more likely to own a driver’s licence? The following data compares licencing and parenting rates (defined as proportion of adults doing unpaid caring work for their own children aged under 15) for postcodes:

There is a significant relationship, with postcodes with higher rates of parenting generally have higher rates of driver’s licence ownership. This may well be related to licence ownership rates also peaking for people of the most common parenting ages, and also the fact many young families live in the outer suburbs (where private transport is often more competitive than public transport). The postcodes with the lowest licence ownership rates also have very low proportions of parents (and probably contain many young adults who are studying).

For reference here is a map of parenting percentages for Sydney postcodes:

Motor vehicle ownership

It stands to reason that areas with higher driver’s licence ownership rates might also have higher motor vehicle ownership rates. I’ve calculated the ratio of persons aged 18-84 to household motor vehicles for each postcode, to create the following chart:

You can see the relationship is very strong, with more advantaged (and often near-CBD) postcodes towards the top of the cloud, and more disadvantaged postcodes mostly at the bottom and middle of the cloud.

Silverwater is an outlier – but I should point out that my calculation of motor vehicle ownership only counts people living in private dwellings while licence ownership is for all residents (including the many who resided in Silverwater’s correctional facilities).

There are also a small curious bunch of outliers with around 100 motor vehicles per 100 persons aged 18-84 but only 70-90 licences per 100 persons aged 16-84. These include urban fringe suburbs such as Marsden Park, Riverstone, Oakville, Rossmore, Gregory Hills, Leppington, Voyager Point, Kemps Creek, and Horsley Park. Perhaps these areas may contain farm vehicles that might skew the motor vehicle ownership rates.

While spatial data about licence ownership is unfortunately not readily available for most states of Australia, this chart suggested that motor vehicle ownership (something thankfully still captured by the census, despite ABS trying to drop the question) is a reasonably strong proxy for licence ownership.

Population weighted density

Given postcodes can be quite large (one has a population of over 100,000!), I prefer to use population-weighted density as a metric of urban density (as opposed to raw density). Here’s how that related to licence ownership (note a log scale on the X-axis):

That’s a pretty strong relationship, and of course not unexpected. Areas with higher population density generally have great public transport services, and more services and jobs would likely be accessible by walking, reducing the need for a car or driver’s licence.

Proximity to high quality public transport

I’ve previously confirmed a relationship between public transport mode share and proximity to high quality public transport, so does the presence of high quality public transport also relate to driver’s licence ownership?

As mentioned above, I’ve classified postcodes as to whether or not there was a train or busway station contained within the postcode boundary in 2016. It’s a blunt measure because stations may only serve a small part of large postcodes, or there may be a station just outside a postcode’s boundary that still provides good rail access to that postcode. Some postcodes were also served by light rail and/or very high frequency bus services, just not a train or busway station. I’d love to be able to look at licence ownership by distance from stations, but licensing data is unfortunately only available for postcodes, which does not provide enough resolution.

You can see postcodes with a station generally have lower rates of licence ownership than those without, but there is still plenty of variance across postcodes.

The green postcodes in the top of the left column include Camperdown (University of Sydney, close to the CBD with very high frequency on-road buses), Ultimo (just next to Central Station and the CBD), Kensington (includes UNSW campus, with strong bus (and now light rail) connections), Chippendale / Darlington (wedged between Central and Redfern Stations), and Waterloo / Zetland (very close to Green Square Station and also served by high frequency on-road buses).

Many of the postcodes with stations but high licence ownership (bottom of right hand column) are in the outer suburbs, where train frequencies may be lower, and public transport services in non-radial directions may have lower quality.

So the exceptions to the relationship are quite explainable, and I’d suggest there is a strong relationship. Again, it may be people without a licence choosing to live near public transport, and/or people not near high quality public transport deciding they must have a licence to get around.

Educational qualifications

I have also found a relationship between educational qualifications and commuter mode shares in Melbourne, so are licencing rates related to levels of educational attainment in Sydney?

There’s not much of a relationship happening here between licence ownership and education, other than some inner city postcodes with a high proportion of educated residents and lower rates of licence ownership. There is of course an (expected) relationship between advantage and education.

But just on that, one curious outlier postcode on the chart is Lakemba / Wiley Park (2195), with 29% of the population having a Bachelor’s degree or higher, but it being in the most disadvantaged decile. This postcode has a large proportion of people not born in Australia, with significant numbers born in Lebanon and Bangladesh. Perhaps this reasonably well-educated but highly disadvantaged population is a product of lack of recognition of overseas qualifications, and/or maybe issues with discrimination.

Distance from Sydney CBD

In Melbourne, distance from the CBD has a strong relationship with mode choice, and I would not be surprised if there was similarly a relationship with licence ownership. However Melbourne only has one large dense employment cluster (the central city), while Sydney has multiple large dense employment clusters which is likely to lead to different patterns (see Suburban employment clusters and the journey to work in Australian cities).

From the first map in this post you cannot see a strong relationship between licence ownership and distance from the Sydney CBD – it is clear that many other factors are influencing licence ownership rates across Sydney (such as proximity to university campuses and employment clusters). Having said that, it seems clear that most “outer” suburban postcodes have high levels of licence ownership, but distance from the CBD is probably not a good proxy for “outer”.

Also some postcodes are quite large, and are a little problematic to assign to a distance value or range from the CBD, and the presence of two large harbours means crow-flies distance to the Sydney CBD is not necessarily reflective of ease/speed of travel to the Sydney CBD.

For these reasons I’ve not crunched data on home distance from the Sydney CBD. With a lot more effort, perhaps a metric could be created that considers travel time to Sydney’s major centres (although these centres vary in size).

Which factors have the strongest relationship with licence ownership?

The factors shown above had the strongest relationships with licence ownership (I tested three other factors which had weaker relationships, covered in the appendices below).

I put all the factors for Greater Sydney postcodes into a simple linear multiple regression model, and without labouring the details, I found that the following factors were significant at explaining postcode licence ownership rates (each with p-values less than 0.05 and overall an R-squared of 0.83), listed with the most significant first:

  • Ratio of population aged 35-69 : population aged 15-84. For every 1% this ratio is higher, licence ownership per 100 persons aged 16-84 is generally 1.0 higher (all other things being equal)
  • Rate of motor vehicle ownership: every extra motor vehicle per 100 persons aged 18-84, there are generally 0.35 more licences per 100 persons aged 16-84 (all other things being equal)
  • People who have a bachelors degree or higher: For every 1% this is higher, licence ownership per 100 persons aged 16-84 is generally 0.18 higher (all other things being equal)
  • Postcodes containing or adjacent to a major university campus or correctional centre. These postcodes generally had 14 fewer licences per 100 persons aged 18-64 (all other things being equal)

Factors that fell out of the regression as not significant were Sydney CBD commuter percentage, presence of a train or busway station, socio-economic advantage/disadvantage, population weighted density, parenting percentage, student status, and percent of population speaking English very well. Of course many of these metrics would correlate with the four significant factors above.

I was a little surprised to see educational qualifications show up as significant, given the weak direct relationship seen in the scatter plot, however the impact was small (0.18) and it may be acting as a proxy for other factors such as proportion of commuters working in the Sydney CBD (which was the “strongest” factor that fell out – having a p-value of 0.11).

This analysis was done using postcode level which has issues in terms of blending populations. It is possible to look at individuals using household travel survey data, and I’ve had a quick look using VISTA data from Melbourne. Without going into full detail in this post, I’ve found stronger relationships with age, sex, household income, parenting status, main activity, distance from train stations, and a weaker relationship with distance from CBD. Maybe that could be the focus of a future post.

I hope you’ve found this interesting.

Appendix 1: English proficiency

Probably related to recent immigrant figures, postcodes with a larger proportion of residents speaking English very well generally had slightly higher levels of licence ownership, although the relationship is not tight:

Curiously though, the relationship seems to be stronger for more advantaged postcodes. Disadvantaged postcodes with lower levels of English proficiency still had licence ownership rates of around 80 per 100 persons aged 16-84 (top-left of the cloud).

As an aside: is English proficiency lower in postcodes with many recent immigrants?

The answer is yes, but lower levels of English proficiency are not always explained by recent immigration. Of course some of the recent immigrants will speak English very well (many settling in places like Manly, Darlinghurst, Waterloo, Pyrmont), while others will not, depending on their country of origin. The large red dot to the bottom-left is postcode 2166, which includes the migrant area of Cabramatta (sorry about the label that overlaps other data points). It would appear that this postcode has many longer term residents who don’t speak English very well (although they might rank themselves as speaking English “well” rather than “very well”, which is below my arbitrary threshold of “very well” plus native English speakers).

Appendix 2: Student status

I have recently found a relationship between student-status and and journey to work mode shares in Melbourne (although yet to be published at the time of writing). So does the proportion of residents (over 15) who are studying have a relationship with driver licence ownership rates?

Here’s a scatter plot, with socio-economic advantage and disadvantage overlaid:

Apart from some exceptional postcodes with larger proportions of students, there appears to be little to no relationship between studying and licence ownership.

1 Comment | Car ownership, drivers license, Migration, Mode share, Sydney, Urban density | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Are Australian cities sprawling with low-density car-dependent suburbs?

Wed 30 January, 2019

Many people talk about urban growth in Australian cities being car-dependent low-density suburban sprawl. But how true is that in more recent times? Are new greenfield density targets making a difference? Are cities growing around their rapid public transport networks? And how do growth areas compare to established areas at a similar distance out from city centres?

This post takes a look at what census data can tell us about outer urban growth areas in terms of population density, motor vehicle ownership, distance from train/busway stations, and journey to work mode shares.

How much of city population growth is in outer areas?

Firstly a recap, here is the percentage of annual population growth in each city that has occurred in “outer” areas (defined by groupings of SA3s around the edges of cities – refer my previous post for maps showing outer areas) for Greater Capital City Statistical Areas.

Sydney has had less than a third of its population growth in outer areas since around 2003, while Perth has mostly had the highest outer growth percentage (since 1996), and more recently pretty much all population growth in Perth has been on the fringe. You can see how the other cities sit in between.

However, not all of this “outer” population growth was in urban growth on the fringe. For that we need to distinguish between urban growth and infill development, even in “outer” areas. So we really need a better definition of outer growth areas.

How to define outer urban growth areas

I have built groupings of SA1s (Statistical Area Level 1) that try to represent outer urban greenfield residential development. SA1s are the smallest census geographic areas (average population 400) for which all census data variables are available.

I’ve selected 2016 SA1s that meet all of the following criteria:

  • Brand new SA1 or significant population growth: The 2016 SA1 is new and cannot be matched to a 2011 SA1 (by location/size and/or ABS correspondences), or if it can be matched, the population at least doubled between 2011 and 2016. Brand new SA1s are very common in urban growth areas as new SA1s are created to avoid oversized SA1s on last census boundaries (except this doesn’t always happen – more on that shortly).
  • In an SA2 with significant population growth: The SA2 (Statistical Area Level 2 – roughly suburb sized with typically 3,000 to 25,000 residents) that contains the SA1 had population growth of at least 1000 people between 2011 and 2016 (based on 2016 boundaries). That is, the general area is seeing population growth, not just one or two SA1s.
  • Are on – or close to – the urban fringe. I’ve filtered out particular SA2s that I’ve judged to be contain all or mostly in-fill development rather than greenfield development, or that are largely surrounded by existing urban areas and are not close to the urban fringe. I’ll be the first to admit that some of the inclusions/exclusions are a little arbitrary.

The criteria aren’t perfect, but it seems to work pretty well when I inspect the data. I’m calling these “Growth SA1s” or outer urban growth in this post.

For urban centres, I’m using Significant Urban Area 2016 boundaries (rather than Greater Capital City boundaries), and I’ve bundled Yanchep with Perth, Melton with Melbourne, and the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast with Brisbane to form South East Queensland (SEQ).

Where are these outer urban growth areas?

What follows are maps for each city with the density of these growth SA1s shown by colour.

Melbourne’s northern and western growth areas:

Technical note: The maps do not show non-growth SA1s with fewer than 5 people per hectare, or “growth SA1s” with fewer than 1/hectare, although these SA1s are including in later analysis.

And the south of Melbourne:

Note: not shown on these Melbourne maps are isolated tiny growth SA1s in Rosebud and Mooroolbark.

Here are Sydney’s growth SA1s – all in the western suburbs:

Next up South East Queensland, starting in the north with the Sunshine Coast:

Northern Brisbane:

Outer urban growth is scattered in southern Brisbane and northern Gold Coast:

Gold Coast – Tweed Heads:

Perth’s northern and eastern growth areas:

Perth’s southern growth areas:

Note: Canning Vale East is an inclusion you could debate – the previous land use of the growth SA1s appear to have been rural based on satellite imagery.

Northern Adelaide:

Southern Adelaide:

And finally Canberra:

So how much of each cities’ population growth has been in outer growth areas?

Here’s a breakdown of the population growth for my six urban areas:

Over the five-year period, outer urban growth areas accounted for 19% of Sydney’s population growth, 43% of Melbourne’s, 37% of SEQ’s, 60% of Perth’s, 27% of Adelaide’s and 69% of Canberra’s.

Technical note: These “outer urban growth” figures are different to the chart at the top of this post which had a coarser definition of “outer” and used Greater Capital City boundaries. Some of my “outer urban growth” areas actually don’t quality as “outer” in the coarser definition, and I’ve also excluded several “outer” SA2s from “outer urban growth” where I’ve deemed the growth to be mostly infill. Hence the differences.

In case you are wondering, it’s not easy to create a longer-term time-series analysis about the proportion of population growth in “outer urban growth” areas because the classification of SA2s would have to change on a year-by-year basis which would be messy and somewhat arbitrary.

A challenge for density analysis: some SA1s are over-sized

You might have noticed some SA1s in the maps above are very large and show a low average density of 1-5 persons per hectare (I’ve coloured them in a light cyan). Many of these SA1s had thousands of residents in 2016, which is way more than the ABS guideline of 200 to 800 residents. Unfortunately what seems to have happened for 2011 and 2016 in some cities is that the ABS did not create enough SA1s to account for new urban areas. Some Melbourne SA1s had a population over 4000 in 2016. Many of these SA1s contain a combination or urban and rural land use, so their calculated density is rather misleading.

I’m designating any SA1s with more than 1000 residents and larger than 100 hectares as “oversized”, and I’ve exclude these from some density analysis below. Here’s a chart showing the proportion of outer growth area populations that are in oversized SA1s:

You can see it is a substantial problem in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and South East Queensland, but miraculously not a problem at all in Adelaide or Canberra (I’m sure someone in ABS could explain why this is so!).

If you are interested, in 2011 it was a bigger problem in Melbourne, and only Canberra was fully clean.

So how dense are outer urban growth areas?

Firstly, I am excluding over-sized SA1s from this analysis for the reasons just mentioned.

Secondly, all cities will also have growth areas that were partially developed at the time of the census (ie some lots with occupied houses and other lots empty) so the densities measured here may be understated of the likely fully built-out density of these SA1s. That said, those areas perhaps are more likely to be in over-sized SA1s, but it’s hard to be sure. So keep this in mind when looking at growth area densities.

You can see dramatic differences, with Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne showing higher densities, and South East Queensland with much lower densities. As we saw on the maps above, South East Queensland’s outer growth areas are very dispersed, so perhaps more of them are growing slowly and more of them are partially built-out? It’s hard to be sure.

But perhaps what is most remarkable is that Canberra had the highest densities in outer urban growth areas of any city – nothing like what you might consider suburban sprawl. Here’s what was 144.5 people per hectare in 2016 in Wright on Canberra’s new western growth front looks like:

(pic from Google Streetview, dated December 2016)

The densest SA1 in Sydney’s growth areas was 101 persons/ha. Nothing like this was seen in other cities.

Canberra’s outer growth areas are actually, on average, denser than the rest of Canberra (on a population weighted density measure):

The same was also true by a slim margin in both Perth and Adelaide, but they have relatively “suburban” densities for both growth and established areas. The growth areas of Sydney and Melbourne are more dense than Perth and Adelaide, but not compared to the rest of these cities as a whole. That’s probably got to do a lot with the large cities having dense inner suburbs.

So perhaps it is better to compare the urban growth areas with established areas a similar distance from city centres, which the following chart does (I’ve filtered out 5 km distance intervals without growth areas of at least 2000 population, and apologies for rather squashed Canberra label):

Technical note: for South East Queensland I’ve measured distances from the Brisbane CBD.

Outer growth areas were much more dense than the rest of each city at most distances from the city centre, except in Sydney.

One issue with the above chart is that different distance intervals have different populations – for example only 2,815 people were in growth SA1s at a distance of 45-50 km from the Perth CBD (just above my threshold of 2000), so the low population density of that interval is not hugely significant.

To get around that issue, I’ve calculated the overall population weighted density of non-growth SA1s that are within these 5 km distance intervals from the CBD (including all of SEQ beyond 15 km from the CBD). The following chart compares those calculations with the population weighted density of the growth areas overall:

This shows that urban growth areas are on average more dense than other parts of the city at similar distance from the CBD, except in South East Queensland. And remember, many of the growth SA1s will be partially built out, so their expected density is understated.

Are outer urban growth areas near rapid public transport?

The next chart shows the proportion of growth SA1 population by distance from the nearest train or busway station:

Technical notes: Distances are measured from the centroid of each SA1 to a point location defined for each station (sourced from August 2016 GTFS feeds). For oversized SA1s these distances might be a little longer than reality for the average resident. I haven’t excluded oversized SA1s because I want to see the population alignment of growth areas overall. Canberra excluded due to lack of separated rapid transit.

What sticks out clearly is that just over half the of the population in Perth’s outer growth areas was more than 5 km from a station in 2016. That is to say Perth has had the least alignment of outer urban growth areas and rapid public transport networks of all five cities. I’m not sure many urban planners would recommend such a strategy.

However, Perth’s MetroNet program appears to be trying to rectify this with new lines and stations proposed near urban growth areas such as Yanchep, Canning Vale East, Ellenbrook, Byford, and Karnup (Golden Bay). It will however take some time to get to them all built and open.

South East Queensland was second to Perth in terms of urban growth remote from stations, with a lot of the growth scattered rather than concentrated around rail corridors. I haven’t included the Gold Coast light rail in my proximity calculation – it runs at an average speed of 27 km/h (which is slower than most train networks) and doesn’t serve outer urban growth areas.

Sydney and Adelaide had the highest proximity of growth areas to stations.

Around half of Melbourne’s growth SA1s that were more than 5km from a train station were in Mernda and Doreen, a corridor in which a rail extension opened in 2018. Many of the rest are not in the current designated growth corridors, or are where future train stations are planned. Melbourne’s current designated urban growth corridors are fairly well aligned to its train network. From a transport perspective this is arguably a better kind of sprawl than what Perth has been experiencing.

Adelaide’s outer growth areas more than 5 km from a station were in Mount Barker (satellite town to the east) and Aldinga (on the far south coast of Adelaide).

Are the outer urban growth areas better aligned to rapid public transport stations than non-growth areas at the same distance from city centres? Here’s the chart as above but with an extra column for non-growth areas within the same distance intervals from the CBD (as before).

The populations of urban growth areas are less likely to be within a couple of kilometres of a station (most of that land probably has long-established urban development), but curiously in Adelaide and South East Queensland the urban growth areas are more likely to be within 5 kilometres of a station than the non-growth areas, suggesting better rapid public transport alignment than older urban growth areas. Older urban areas in other cities are more closely aligned to stations, particularly in Perth.

As an interesting aside, here’s a breakdown over the last three censuses of population by distance from train/busway stations (operational in 2016 – so it overstates 2006 and 2011 slightly):

You can really see how Perth has had much population growth remote from its rapid public transport network, which probably goes some way to explaining the overall 1.2% journey to work mode shift towards private transport between 2011 and 2016.

So how did people in these outer growth areas get to work?

Technical note: The figures here for “private transport” are for journeys involving only private transport modes – i.e. they exclude journeys involving both private and public transport (eg car+train).

While private transport (mostly car driver only journeys) dominated journeys to work from almost all growth areas, Melbourne and Sydney were the only cities to see significant numbers of residents in outer growth areas with private transport mode shares below 80%.

South East Queensland’s outer urban growth areas were the most reliant on private transport to get to work, with an overall private transport mode share of 93%, followed by Adelaide on 92%, Canberra on 91%, Perth on 90%, Melbourne on 86%, and Sydney on 81%.

Here’s how the growth area mode shares compare to other areas a similar distance from city centres (note: the Y-axis is not zero-based):

Significantly, the growth areas of Sydney and Melbourne had lower private transport mode shares of journeys to work than other parts of the city a similar distance out – even though they are generally further away from train or busway stations (as we saw above)! That’s not to say they didn’t drive themselves to a train station to get to work.

Similar to population density, here is a summary of growth areas compared to other areas in the same distance interval from the CBD:

There’s really not a huge amount of difference within cities. Sydney’s growth areas had a mode share 1.5% lower than non-growth areas, while Canberra’s growth areas had a mode share 2.5% higher.

What are motor vehicle ownership rates like in the outer growth areas?

My preferred measure is household motor vehicles per persons aged 18-84 (roughly people of driving age).

Motor vehicle ownership rates are generally very high across the growth areas – with the notable exceptions of Melbourne and Canberra where around a quarter of the growth area population had a motor vehicle ownership rate of less than 80 (although that is still pretty high!). (I explored this in more detail in an earlier post on Melbourne)

South East Queensland, Perth, and Adelaide outer urban growth areas had the highest motor vehicle ownership rates. Perth’s urban growth areas overall averaged 96.7 motor vehicles per persons aged 18-84 – pretty close to saturation.

How does motor vehicle ownership compare to established areas a similar distance from the city centre? The following chart compares motor vehicle ownership between urban growth and other areas at the same distance from the CBD (note: the Y-axis is not zero-based):

Motor vehicle ownership tends to increase with distance from the CBD, and in Sydney and South East Queensland the growth areas have higher ownership compared to non-growth areas. But the opposite is true in Melbourne, Perth and Canberra.

The population at each distance interval varies considerably, so here is a summary of the data across all distance intervals that have growth SA1s for each city:

The growth areas of Melbourne, Perth and Canberra had slightly lower motor vehicle ownership than other areas a similar distance from the city, while the opposite was true in other cities. That said, motor vehicle ownership rates are very high across all cities.

 

Finally, I’ll look at the relationships between these measures for growth areas (see another post for analysis for whole cities).

How does motor vehicle ownership relate to distance from stations?

Technical note: for scatter plots I’ve filtered out SA1s with less than 50 population as they are more likely to have outlier results (one person can change a measure by 2% or more).

Lower rates of motor vehicle ownership are generally only found close to train/busway stations (and are dominated by Melbourne examples), but close proximity to a station does not guarantee lower rates of motor vehicle ownership. Quite a few Adelaide SA1s are found the top middle part of the chart – these are all in Mount Barker which has frequent peak period express buses to the Adelaide CBD operating along the South East Freeway – which is similar to rapid transit although without a dedicated right of way.

How do journey to work mode shares relate to distance from stations?

Here’s a scatter plot of private transport mode shares of journeys to work and distance from train/busway station:

This shows that lower private transport mode shares are only generally seen within proximity of train or busway stations, and areas remote from stations are very likely to have high private transport mode shares. But also that proximity to a station does not guarantee lower private transport mode shares of journeys to work (particularly in SEQ).

Technical aside: You might have noticed that almost no SA1s report 99% private mode share. How can that be? The ABS make random adjustments to small figures to avoid identification of individuals which means you never see counts of 1 and 2 in their data. To get a mode share of 99% you’d need at least 300 journeys to work with “3” being non-private (or a similar but larger ratio). Very few SA1s have 300+ journeys to work, and even for over-sized SA1s, they are very unlikely to have only 3 or 4 non-private journeys to work. A mode share of 100% is much easier because you can get that no matter the total number of journeys.

How does population density relate to distances from train/busway stations?

Densities above 45 persons/ha were mostly only found within 5 km of stations, and almost entirely in Sydney and Melbourne. The highest densities were very close to train stations in Sydney. In the middle area of the chart you can see quite a few Perth SA1s that are around 30-40 persons/ha but remote from stations. These are all in the Ellenbrook area of Perth’s north-east, generating a lot of car traffic.

How does motor vehicle ownership relate to private transport mode shares of journeys work to work?

For interest, here is the relationship as a scatter plot:

There is certainly a relationship, but it’s not strong (r-squared = 0.22). Other factors are at play.

Conclusions

  • Perth and Canberra are seeing most of their population growth on the fringe, with Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, and South East Queensland seeing most of their population growth in established areas.
  • Growth areas in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra have higher than traditional urban densities, indeed Sydney and Canberra have a few very high density greenfield developments. Perth, Adelaide, and particularly South East Queensland have urban growth at relatively low densities. In fact, SEQ is the only major urban centre where growth areas are measured as less dense than non-growth areas at similar distances from the CBD.
  • Perth’s urban growth areas are largely remote from rapid transit stations, and this is likely contributing directly to very high and increasing rates of motor vehicle ownership and private transport mode shares. Melbourne’s current urban growth corridors are closely aligned to train stations (thanks to the opening of the Mernda line), and this is also largely true of Sydney and Adelaide.
  • Almost all outer urban growth areas had high rates of motor vehicle ownership. Overall, Melbourne, Perth, and Canberra’s outer urban growth areas had slightly lower rates of motor vehicle ownership compared to other areas at the same distance from the CBD. Only Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra have some growth areas with lower motor vehicle ownership and/or lower private transport mode shares of journeys to work – and these were all close to train or busway stations.

I hope you’ve found this at least half as interesting as I have.

For a similar and more detailed analysis around these topics, see this excellent 2013 BITRE research report on changes between 2001 and 2006.

1 Comment | Australian Cities, Brisbane, Car ownership, Melbourne, Mode share, Mode shift, Sydney, Urban density, Urban Planning | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

What explains variations in journey to work mode shares between and within Australian cities?

Thu 6 December, 2018

Private and public transport journey to work mode shares vary considerably both between Australian cities and within them. Are these differences related to factors such as population density, motor vehicle ownership, employment density, proximity to train stations, proximity to busway stations, jobs within walking distance of homes, and distance from the city centre?

This posts sheds some light on those relationships for Australia’s six largest cities. I’m afraid it isn’t a short post (so get comfortable) but it’s fairly comprehensive (over 30 charts).

I should stress up front that a strong relationship between a certain factor and high or low mode shares does not imply causation. There are complex relationships between many of these factors, for example motor vehicle ownership rates are generally lower in areas of higher residential density (which I will also explore), and more factors beyond what I will explore here.

If you are interested in seeing spatial mode share patterns, see previous posts for Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney. You might also be interested in my analysis explaining the mode shifts between 2011 and 2016.

Population density

Higher population densities are commonly associated with higher public transport use. This stands to reason, as high density areas have more potential users per unit of area, but also higher density is likely to mean high land prices, which in turn increases the cost of residential parking. But higher public transport mode share can only happen if government’s invest in higher service levels, and this isn’t guaranteed to happen (although it often does, through pressures of overcrowding).

My preferred measure is population weighted density, which is the weighted average density of land parcels in a city, weighted by their population (this gets around problems of including sparsely populated urban land). I’ve measured it at census district (CD) geography for 2006 and Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) geography for 2011 and 2016, using 2011 Significant Urban Area boundaries to define cities. The 2006 density figures are not perfectly comparable with 2011 and 2016 because CDs are slightly larger than SA1s, so the density values will be calculated as slightly smaller.

Here is the relationships at city level (the thin end of each worm is 2006 and the thick end 2016, with 2011 in the middle):

The relationship is very strong for Melbourne and Sydney over time. Between 2011 and 2016, Perth and Brisbane saw increased population density but reduced public transport mode share (mostly because of changes in the distribution of jobs between the centre and the suburbs).

Brisbane was a bit of an outlier in 2006 and 2011 with high public transport mode share relative to its lower population density.

Canberra is also perhaps a bit of an outlier, with much lower public transport mode share compared to similarly low density cities. This might be explained by the smaller total population, lower jobs density, and lack of rapid public transport services segregated from traffic.

But Canberra does have higher active transport mode share, so it’s worth doing the same analysis with private transport mode shares:

Brisbane was still an outlier in the relationship in 2006 and 2011, but Canberra is more in line with other data points.

Another interesting note is that Canberra went from being the least dense city in 2006 to the third most dense in 2016.

Drilling down to SA2 geography (SA2s are roughly the size of a suburb), here’s a chart showing all SA2s in all cities across the three census years (filtered for CDs and SA1s with at least 5 persons per hectare). I’ve animated it to highlight one city at a time so you can compare the cities, and I’ve used a log scale on the X-axis to spread out the data points (only the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs go off the chart to the right).

(if these animated GIF charts are not clear on your screen, you can click to enlarge the image, then use “back” to come back to this page).

You can see a fairly strong relationship, although it is very much a “cloud” rather than a tight relationship – there are other factors at play.

What I find interesting is that Sydney has had a lot of SA2s with population weighted densities around 50-100 but private mode shares over 55% (toward the upper-right part of the cloud of data points) – which are rare in all other cities. That’s a lot of traffic generation density, which cannot be great for road congestion. In a future post I might focus in on the outlier SA2s that are in the top right of these charts (can public transport do better in those places?).

In case you are wondering about the Brisbane SA2 with low density and low private transport mode share (middle left of chart) it is the Redland Islands where car-carrying ferries are essential to get off an island, and are counted as public transport in my methodology. The Canberra outlier in the bottom left is Acton (which is dominated by the Australian National University).

Employment density

I’ve calculated a weighted job density in the same way I’ve calculated population weighted density, but using Destination Zones (which can actually be quite large so it certainly isn’t perfect). Weighted job density is a weighted average of job densities of all destination zones, weighted by the number of jobs in each zone. In a sense it is the density at which the average person works

(technical notes: I’ve actually only counted jobs as people who travelled on census day and reported their mode(s) of travel. Unfortunately I only have 2006 data for Sydney and Melbourne)

This chart suggests a very strong relationship at the city level, with all cities either moving up and left (Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane) or down and right (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra).

So is the relationship as strong when you break it down to the Destination Zone level? The next chart shows jobs density and private mode share for all destination zones for 2016. Note that there is a log scale on the x-axis, and Adelaide dots are drawn on top of other cities in the top left which explains why that dense cloud of dots appears mostly green.

There’s clearly a strong relationship, although again the data points form a large cloud rather than tightly bunch around a line, so other factors will be at play.

It’s also interesting to see that the blue Sydney dots are generally lower than other cities at all job densities. That is, Sydney generally has lower private transport mode shares than other cities, regardless of employment density.

Which leads us to the next view: the private transport mode shares for jobs in different density ranges in each city for 2011 and 2016.

(click to enlarge if the chart appears blurry)

You can see a fairly consistent relationship between weighted job density and mode shares across all cities in both 2011 and 2016.

At almost all job density ranges, Sydney had the lowest average private transport mode share, while Adelaide and Perth were generally the highest (data points are not shown when there are fewer than 5 destination zones at a density range for a city). This shows that something other than jobs density is impacting private transport mode shares in Sydney. Is it walking catchment, public transport quality & quantity, or something else?

For more on the relationship between job density and mode share, see this previous post.

Proximity to public transport

Trains generally provide the fastest and most punctual public transport services (being largely separated from road traffic and having longer stop spacing), and are the most common form of rapid transit in Australian cities. So you would expect higher public transport mode shares around train stations.

Here is a chart showing average journey to work public transport mode shares by home distance from train stations. It’s animated over the three census years, with a longer pause on 2016.

Technical note: A limitation here is that I’ve measured all census years against train stations that were operational in 2016 – so the 2006 and 2011 mode shares will be under-stated for the operational stations of those years. For example, in Melbourne the following stations opened between 2011 and 2016: Williams Landing, South Morang, Lynbrook, and Cardinia Road.

You can see that public transport shares went up between 2006 and 2011 in most cities at all distances from train stations. In both Perth and Brisbane there were new train lines opened between 2006 and 2011, which will explain some of that growth.

But if you watch carefully you will see public transport mode shares near train stations fell in both Brisbane and Perth between 2011 and 2016. That is, there was a mode shift away from public transport, even for people living close to train stations. As discussed previously, this is most likely related to there being only small jobs growth in the CBDs of those cities between 2011 and 2016, compared to suburban locations.

You can also see that public transport mode shares aren’t that much higher for areas near train stations in Adelaide (I’ll come back to that).

We can do the same for train mode shares (any journey involving train):

Again, Sydney’s train stations seem to have the biggest pulling power, while Adelaide’s have the least.

Busways are the other major form of rapid transit in Australian cities, with major lines in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide. Here is a chart of public transport mode share by distance from busway stations, excluding areas also within 1.5 km of a train station:

Note for Adelaide this data only considers suburban stations on the O-bahn, and not bus stops in the CBD. For Sydney all “T-Way” station are included, plus the four busway stations on the M2 motorway for which buses run into the CBD (but not the relatively short busway along Anzac Parade in Moore Park). Sydney’s north west T-Ways opened in 2007

Proximity to a busway station appears to influence public transport mode share strongly in Brisbane and Adelaide, where busways are mostly located in the inner and middle suburbs and cater for trips to the CBD. Sydney’s busway stations are in the “outer” western suburbs, feeding Blacktown, Parramatta, but also relatively long distance services to the Sydney CBD via the M2.

Curiously, public transport mode shares were higher in places between 3 and 5 km from busway stations in Sydney, compared to immediately adjacent areas. I’m not sure that I can explain that easily, but it suggests equally attractive public transport options exist away from busway and train stations.

The station proximity influence appears to extend around 1 km, which possibly reflects the fact that few busway stations have park and ride facilities, and are therefore more dependent on walking as an access mode (although cycling may be another station access mode).

Over time Sydney public transport mode share lifted at all distances from busway stations, while in Brisbane it rose in 2011 and then fell again in 2016, in line with other city mode shares.

So are busway stations similar to train stations in their impact on public transport mode share? To answer this I’ve segmented cities into areas near train stations, near busway stations, near both, and near neither. I’ve used 1.5 km as a proximity threshold that might represent an extended walking catchment.

In Sydney, train stations appear to have a much stronger influence on public transport mode shares than busway stations, but the opposite is true in Brisbane and Adelaide. This possibly reflects the much higher service frequencies on Adelaide and Brisbane busways compared to their trains, and the fact Sydney’s busway stations are so far from the CBD (and thus have fewer workers travelling to the CBD where public transport dominates mode share).

Also of note in this chart is that for areas more than 1.5 km from a train or busway station, Sydney had a much higher public transport mode share compared to the other cities. These areas will be served mostly by on-road buses, but also some ferries and one light rail line. Adelaide has the least difference between mode share for areas near and not-near train or busway stations.

We can do the a similar analysis for workplaces:

The most curious pattern here is Adelaide – where public transport mode share was highest for jobs between 1.5-2.5 kms from train stations. This distance band is dominated by the centre of the Adelaide CBD (the station being on the edge, arguably a “corner”), for which bus was the dominant public transport access mode. Also, there was no destination zone small enough near Adelaide central train station to register as 0 – 0.5 km away, and only one that is 0.5 – 1 km away (I use distances between station data points and destination zone centroids). So the results might look slightly different if smaller destination zones were drawn in the Adelaide CBD.

In all other cities there was a very strong relationship between train station proximity and public transport mode share, as you would expect. And Sydney again stands out with high public transport mode shares for workplaces more distant from train stations.

If you are wondering, the bump in Sydney at 2.5 to 3 km includes the Kensington / Randwick area which has high employment density and a strong bus connection to the central city (partly assisted by the Anzac Parade busway). And the relatively high figure for Melbourne at 1 – 1.5 km includes parts of Docklands, Parkville, Southbank, and St Kilda Road, which all have high tram service levels.

Unfortunately destination zones around busway stations are generally too large to provide meaningful insights so I’m not presenting such data.

Motor vehicle ownership

It will come as little surprise that there is a relationship between household motor vehicle ownership and journey to work mode shares.

Here’s a summary chart for each city for the 2006, 2011 and 2016 censuses:

There appears to be a fairly strong relationship between the two factors at city level.

Sydney and Melbourne have seen the largest mode shift away from private transport, but only Melbourne has also seen declining motor vehicle ownership rates.

Canberra saw only weak growth in motor vehicle ownership between 2011 and 2016, and at the same time there was a shift away from private transport (and a large increase in population weighted density).

Perth and Brisbane saw increasing private transport mode share and increasing motor vehicle ownership between 2011 and 2016.

Here’s a more detailed look at the relationship over time for Melbourne at SA2 geography:

The outliers on the upper left are generally less-wealthy middle-outer suburban areas (lower motor vehicle ownership but high private mode share), while the outliers to the lower-right are wealthy inner suburbs where people can afford to own plenty of motor vehicles, but they didn’t use them all to get to work.

In the bottom left of the chart are inner city SA2s with declining private mode share and declining motor vehicle ownership. For motor vehicle ownership rates around 70-80 (motor vehicles per persons aged 18-84), there are many SA2s with private mode shares that declined 2006 to 2016, but not significantly lowering motor vehicle ownership rates. That suggests that just because people own many motor vehicles, they don’t necessarily use them to drive them to work.

Here is the same data for Sydney:

There are many SA2s with motor vehicle ownership rates around 50 to 70 where the private mode shares are dropping faster than motor vehicle ownership. But there are also many areas with high private mode shares and increasing rates of motor vehicle ownership.

How do the other cities compare? Here are all the SA2s for all cities on the same chart, with alternating highlighted cities:

You can see big differences between the cities, but also that Brisbane and Perth have many SA2s with very high private mode share and rapidly increasing motor vehicle ownership (ie moving up and right, although it’s a little difficult to see with so many lines overlapping). Melbourne and Sydney have plenty of SA2s moving down and left – reducing motor vehicle ownership and declining private transport mode share (which may make some planners proud).

Of course there will be a relationship between motor vehicle ownership and where people choose to live and work. People working in the central city may prefer to live near train stations so they can avoid driving in congested traffic to expensive car parks. People who prefer not to drive might choose to live close to work and/or a frequent public transport line. People who are happy to drive to work in the suburbs might avoid higher priced real estate near train stations or the inner city.

As an aside, we can compare total household motor vehicles to the number of people driving to work, to estimate the proportion of household motor vehicles actually used in the journey to work. Here is Melbourne:

SA2s with a lower estimate are generally nearer the CBD, are wealthier areas, have reasonable public transport accessibility, and/or might be areas with a higher proportion of people not in the workforce (for whatever reason). The areas where the highest proportion of motor vehicles are required for the journey to work are relatively new outer suburbs on the fringe (perhaps suggesting forced car ownership), where adult workforce participation is probably high and public transport accessibility is lower.

The proportion of cars used in the journey to work declined on average in many parts of Melbourne. Given that motor vehicle ownership rates in Melbourne barely changed between 2011 and 2016, this probably represents people mode shifting, rather than people acquiring more motor vehicles even though they don’t need them to drive to work.

Jobs within walking distance of home

It stands to reason that people would be more likely to walk to work if there were more work opportunities within walking distance of their home.

For every SA1 I’ve measured how many jobs are approximately within 1 km as a notional walking catchment (measured as the sum of jobs in destination zones whose centroid are within 1 km of the centroid of each home SA1, so it is not perfect). Here’s the relationship with walking mode share:

(there are a lot of dots overlapping in the bottom left-corner and Adelaide dots have been drawn on top so try not to get thrown by that).

You don’t have to have a lot of nearby jobs to get a higher walking mode share, but if you do, you are very likely to get a high walking more share. The exceptions (many jobs, but low walking share) include many parts of Parramatta (Sydney), and areas separated from nearby jobs by water bodies or other topographical barriers (eg Kangaroo Point in Brisbane).

Workplace distance from the city centre

As was seen in a previous post, workplaces closer to city centres had much lower private transport mode shares, which is unsurprising as these are locations with generally the best public transport accessibility, high land values that can lead to higher car parking prices (which impact commuters who pay them), and often higher traffic congestion.

Here is a chart showing private transport mode share by workplace distance from the city centre. I’ve used faded lines to show 2011 and 2006 results (2006 only available for Sydney and Melbourne).

Here’s a chart that shows the mode shifts between 2011 and 2016:

Inner Melbourne had the biggest mode shifts away from private transport (particularly in Docklands that falls into the 1-2 km range, which saw significant employment and tram service growth), but Sydney had more consistent mode shifts across most distances from the city centre. Adelaide and Canberra saw mode shifts away from private transport in the inner city but towards private transport further out.

Brisbane and Perth saw – on average – a mode shift to private transport across almost all distances from the city centre, with the highest mode shift to private transport in Brisbane actually for the CBD itself(!).

Home distance from the city centre

There’s unquestionably a relationship here too, and it’s probably mostly driven by public transport service levels being roughly proportional to distance from the CBD, but also the proportion of the population who work in the CBD being much higher for homes nearer the CBD.

Sydney had the lowest average private transport mode share at all distances up to 20 km from the CBD, followed by Melbourne and Brisbane, in line with overall mode shares.

The trends over time are also interesting. Brisbane saw mode shifts towards private transport at all distances more than 2 km from the city centre between 2011 and 2016. However there were not significant shifts for Perth outside the city centre – that is: modes shares by geography didn’t change very much. The mode shift away from public transport in Perth is best explained by the shift in jobs balance away from the city centre.

Here are public transport mode shares by home distance from city centres:

In most cities, public transport mode share peaked at a few kilometres from the city (as active transport has a higher mode in the central city).

Here are public transport mode shifts by distance from the city centre between 2011 and 2016:

The significant shift in central Melbourne is likely to be largely explained by the Free Tram Zone introduced in 2015. Outside of the city centre the mode shifts are surprisingly uniform across each city.

Here’s the same chart for 2006-2011, and you can clearly see the impact of the opening of the Mandurah railway line in Perth with significant mode shift beyond 30 km:

Curiously there was a massive shift to public transport for CBD residents in Melbourne (and this is before the free tram zone was introduced).

So which factors best explain the patterns in mode shares across cities?

What we’ve clearly seen is that higher public transport mode shares are seen for journeys to work…

  • to higher density workplaces
  • from areas of lower motor vehicle ownership
  • to workplaces closer to train stations
  • from higher density residential areas
  • from areas around train and busway stations
  • to and from areas closer to city centres (except from the central city where walking takes over)
  • from less wealthy areas (while I haven’t tested this directly, wealth seems to explain a lot of the outliers in the scatter plots)

I’ve listed these roughly in order of the strength of the relationships seen in the data, but I haven’t put them all in a regression model (yet, sorry).

Of course most of these factors are inter-related, so we cannot isolate causation factors. I’m going to run through many of them, because they are often interesting: (note I have sometimes used log scales)

Population density is roughly related to distance from the city centre:

Motor vehicle ownership has a strong relationship with population density (see this post for more analysis):

Motor vehicle ownership has a weaker relationships with distance from the city centre:

Motor vehicle ownership is related to home distance from train stations, except in Adelaide:

Technical note: For this chart (and some below) I’ve calculated average quantities for the variable on the Y axis, as there would otherwise there are too many data points on the chart and it becomes very hard to see the relationship (I would need to show all SA1s because SA2s are too large in terms of distance from stations). The downside is that these style of charts don’t indicate the strength of relationships.

Population weighted density is related to distance from train stations, especially in Melbourne and Sydney, but not at all in Adelaide:

There is a relationship – although not strong – between weighted job density and distance from city centres:

There’s some relationship between average weighted jobs density and distance from train stations, except in Adelaide:

Here’s the same data, but as a scatter plot with a point for each destination zone, scaled by the number of journeys to each destination zone, and a linear Y-axis:

Technical note: the X-axis appears green mostly because Adelaide data points are drawn on top of other cities, but those data points aren’t of much interest.

In most cities, destination zones with high jobs density (over 700 jobs/ha) were only found within 1 km of a train station – with the notable major exception of Adelaide (again!).

(If you are curious, the large Melbourne zone at 1.4 km from a train station and 659 jobs/ha is the Parkville hospital precinct – where incidentally a train station is currently under construction).

There is a relationship between motor vehicle ownership and proximity to busway stations, but it varies between cities:

But there’s not much relationship between population density and proximity to busway stations (except in the immediate vicinity of busway stations in Brisbane):

Final remarks: there’s something about Adelaide’s train network

A few key observations come through clearly about the catchments around Adelaide’s train stations:

  • In aggregate they do not have higher population density, unlike other cities.
  • In aggregate they do not have particularly high public transport mode shares, unlike other cities.
  • In aggregate they do not have lower rates of motor vehicle ownership, unlike other cities.
  • They do not include the area of highest job density in the CBD (a longer walk or transfer to tram or bus is required), unlike other cities.

Few cities have spare land corridors available for new at-grade rapid public transport lines, and so transport planners generally want to make maximum use of the ones they’ve got, before opting for expensive and/or disruptive tunnelling or viaducts solutions. It looks like Adelaide’s rail corridors are not reaching their people-moving potential.

By contrast, Adelaide’s “O-Bahn” busway does go into the job dense heart of the CBD and the busway station catchments do have higher public transport mode share and lower motor vehicle ownership. However they do not have higher population density, possibly because the stations are surrounded by car parks, green space, and one large shopping centre (Tea Tree Plaza).

Mode shares, population densities, and motor vehicle ownership rates would quite probably change significantly if Adelaide could address the fourth issue by building a train station near the centre of the CBD.

In fact, Auckland had a very similar problem with its previous main city station being located away from the centre of the CBD. They fixed that with Britomart station opening in 2003 and train patronage soon rose quite dramatically (off a very low base, and also helped by service upgrades, subsequent electrification, and many other investments).

Should Adelaide do the same? It would certainly not be cheap and you would have to weigh up the costs and benefits.

1 Comment | Australian Cities, Brisbane, Car ownership, Employment density, Melbourne, Mode share, Mode shift, Sydney, Urban density | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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