Car use and cycling have soared to above pre-pandemic levels in our biggest cities (Melbourne is an obvious exception). Walking is not far behind, but public transport is being shunned.
Education fuelled extraordinary growth in Western Sydney’s professional services workforce, but their jobs aren’t local. More than 300,000 commute to work outside the region.
The change in our behaviour in response to COVID-19 has created an opportunity to build on this moment and transform our local neighbourhoods into vibrant mixed-use centres of activity.
Between home and work is a window of time and space where we can choose our distractions. Staring out the train window, scrolling the news or perhaps listening to podcasts. We miss it.
Neighborhood characteristics like pollution from busy roads, widespread public transit use and lack of community-based health care are putting certain communities at greater risk from COVID-19.
Some new habits we’ve seen emerging during the pandemic could help us solve tricky problems like traffic congestion, which have challenged our cities for a long time.
After the ‘world’s biggest work-from-home experiment’, many people (and their employers) might decide they needn’t commute every day. If even a fraction do that, infrastructure needs will change.
A breakdown in the road or rail systems often causes commuter chaos in Australia. Some overseas cities are more resilient because they have other options – and our bicycle network could give us that.
Runing Ye, The University of Melbourne and Liang Ma, RMIT University
Average commuting times for Australians have increased by 23% in 15 years. And those with long commutes are less satisfied with their work, working hours, work-life balance and even pay.
While governments focus on how to ease congestion and make affordable housing more accessible for workers in our biggest cities, fast rail could be a mixed blessing for regional cities.
When a city gets to a certain size, it starts to make sense to have multiple centres of activity, and three are planned for Sydney. So what needs to be done to bring the city closer to this goal?
In Sydney, 44 of 178 train stations have a single side entrance. It adds up to 12 minutes of daily travel time for people walking the long way to their platform. It’s enough to make some drive instead.
The Commuter Car Park Fund announced in the budget sounds big, but is likely to create only around 30,000 extra spaces – a marginal benefit for Australia’s 1.2 million daily public transport users.