The Oil Drum

Victoria has a lot of emissions because 81% of the trips we take are by car, and on average only 0.59 people per trip besides the driver.

We drive cars because we have heaps of roads, and the public transport is pretty ordinary.

The trains are good to ride on, but have frequent delays and cancellations during peak hours - when it's important to get where you're going on time. They're also quite infrequent outside peak times on many lines. They don't extend to the new suburbs.

The trams are comfortable to ride on, but slow because they rarely have right of way, idiot car drivers get in their way, and they don't cover all suburbs.

The buses are just shit, slow and infrequent, with 30-60 minutes between buses outside peak times, and many bus stops without timetables, so you don't even know how long you'll have to wait.

There is no authority to co-ordinate the three services, so while the actual travel time on train and bus might be (say) 20 minutes and 15 minutes, with the waits between it might be an hour all up. The services are poorly connected, so that to travel to an adjoining suburb you might have to take the train into the city, then back out again on another line, taking an hour to do what could be a journey of 20 minutes direct.

There are few cycle lanes about, and cyclists are treated by drivers as obstacles rather than fellow travellers, so that cycling is taking your life in your hands.

Walking remains an excellent option for most of Melbourne, but house prices mean that people tend to live some distance from work, further than can be walked. But trips to shops and the like, those are walkable, and here it's just laziness that stops it.

Thus, cars are in general more convenient than public transport in terms of travel time and reliability. They're less convenient in other ways, such as cost and safety, but people don't think of those day-to-day, those are long-term things. Thus, 81% of trips taken are by car, and thus our enormous emissions.

The State Government is lazy and stupid. The Transport Minister Kosky said when asked if privatisation would be reversed, "I don't want to run a public transport system." Someone who doesn't want to run a public transport system should not be a minister for transport. It's like having a Treasurer who doesn't want to run the tax system.

Higher fuel prices have thus far helped bring about a big rise in the use of public transport, despite the incompetence of the PT companies. They've reacted to overcrowding by an advertising campaign telling passengers to be polite to one another.

It's rather as if I had a restaurant, and when customers were lining up to get in, instead of putting more tables out, I hand out little brochures telling them to be patient and nice to each-other while waiting in line. If you get increased custom, you increase your services - this works in any other business, why public transport is thought to be different I don't know.