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If Melbourne is bicycle friendly, why are only 2% of trips taken by bicycle?
I misremembered the numbers and dates. Per capita we had far more passengers in 1929, in absolute terms we have slightly more now, but not as many as in 1950.
According to the PTUA,
I don't know what the population of Melbourne was in 1929, but in 1950 it was 1.3 million, compared to 3.8 million now.
So in 1950 the system managed 20% more passengers in absolute terms, the equivalent of each Melburnian taking 157 trips a year; today we manage 45 trips a year. As I said, these 20% more passengers were achieved with old bakelite rotary dial telephones for communications, and guys with sticks and crowbars - and also without the Loop.
The PTUA discusses this here. Essentially the problem is atrocious management, rather than lack of infrastructure and the like.
Rather than spending $9 billion on some tunnel under the city - as is being talked about now - it'd be better to take $1 billion to Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Zurich, hire 50 competent people at $1 million a year each, and allow them $150 million a year for retrenchments of the current useless managers, retraining of the traffic managers, putting in bike lanes, and so on - with the goal of changing the transport mix from car 80% / PT 10% / walk-bike 10% to car 60% / PT 20% / walk-bike 20% within 5 years. $4 billion of the remaining $8 billion can be performance bonuses, $1 billion to pay Connex and Yarra Trams to bugger off back home, and $3 billion can return to taxpayers. Alternately we could abolish Myki (the overdue overbudget ticketing system that doesn't work) and use the $1 billion from there.
What percentage is required to reach friendly status? It was a comparative comment - cycling from Footscray to the City is quite pleasant (I am advised) - I don't think it is as pleasant cycling from Leichhardt to Sydney CBD.
In relation to historical rail numbers, another meaningful stat might be passenger kms per year - are there more people doing long rail commutes than in 1929? Were the vast majority of those trips from stations relatively close to the City? I am actually surprised the numbers are as they are - I would have thought the decline from 1950 would have been more dramatic (even with steady population growth) - given the enormous impact of the 1-2 car family and the migration to outer suburbs.
Anyway - whatever the numbers, Melbourne is a great place to walk around and in - but my train from Moonee Ponds is always packed, and the station is a sad mess.
Well, I dunno what precise percentage we'd need to call it "bicycle friendly" - but surely more than the 2% we have now.
If you talk to people in Melbourne about transport, a common thing said is, "I'd like to ride but it's dangerous, the cars don't watch out for you." And this ties in with the experiences in other cities, where they made a deliberate effort to get more people cycling and as they did the rate of accidents dropped. This is common sense - one cyclist along a car's road is viewed as an annoyance and an obstacle, fifty are viewed as just part of driving, like roadworks slowing you to 40km/hr and so on.
Now, that cycling is dangerous doesn't mean you have to drive. I'm too cowardly to ride but I walk and use public transport instead. But that's a conscious decision to not drive if I can possibly avoid it, and it's the habit of a lifetime for me.
There are no figures available for passenger-kms on the train system over the decades. However, there have been no new rail lines since 1880, only single-station extensions. I mean, just look at the three maps below, the system in 1891, 1929 and today.
We've got the same tracks as a century ago, basically. So that gives us a qualitative idea of the passenger-kms - they didn't lay down those tracks for the hell of it, people were using them. The difference is that in 1891 you'd go from the town of Dandenong, past the town of Oakleigh and then to Flinders St station in the city, and pass a lot of paddocks in between - but now it's suburbs all the way, so we've got more potential passengers. That is, demand for public transport is higher than in 1891, 1929, or 1950 - we've got more people living near the stations than in those days.
So if people aren't using public transport much, it's not because they don't really want to, it's because the management is too useless to make space for the new customers.