Larvatus Prodeo

The inner north of Melbourne is not a bad place to be a pedestrian or cyclist. There’s any number of shopping and restaurant strips festooned with bicycle hoops, most gradually gentrifying but retaining that slight streak of rebelliousness that distinguishes them from the blue-rinse heartland off to the south-east. Lots of people ride to work along the widely distributed cycle lanes, with artfully placed barriers allowing cycle commuters, but not cars, down wide, flat boulevards like North Carlton’s Canning Street. And there’s a couple of train lines, a profusion of trams, and even a gradually improving bus schedule to get oneself around.

But in amongst this car-haters idyll, there’s one dramatic exception - Alexandra Parade. Despite its pretentious name, it’s a massive traffic sewer that links what used to be the Tullamarine Freeway from the airport, to the Eastern Freeway to the outer-eastern wastelands of Ringwood. And, every weekday morning and evening, the eight lanes of this ugly piece of road are jammed to capacity with cars and trucks; the only people making any progress through it tend to be lane-splitting nutcases on bikes and scooters. Despite the desultory attempts at bicycle lanes, no sane cyclist would go near the smelly particulate-laden air that diffuses from the thousands of commuters, truckies, and courier vans. My own daily commute takes me, briefly, onto the Parade; and while my travelling time hasn’t changed much, the proportion of that time spent weaving through stationary cars and trucks has increased markedly. And, at peak times, the queue of vehicles backed up on the Eastern Freeway trying to enter the inner city can be kilometers long. On occasion, I also take the train to work, from Brunswick into the city, and then out to Hawthorn. As an academic, it doesn’t matter terribly much if I’m in after the 9 o’clock rush, so in the past this usually meant an uncrowded carriage in which I could find out what nonsense Tracee Hutchinson was inflicting on the opinion pages that day. But the squeeze is increasingly on in Melbourne’s rail carriages too; even lunchtime trains into the city are becoming standing room only.

My commuting experiences are Melbourne’s; the city’s transport, particularly the links between the east and west, are being choked by a population growing faster than the other capitals, even boomtown Perth; and that growth is particularly strong in the northern and western suburbs. And so the government has commissioned a The East-West Transport Link Needs Assessment - otherwise known as the Eddington Review after chair Rod Eddington.
Continue reading ‘Tunnels, trains, and the inner-outer divide’