Both Labor and the Liberals have talked about the need for new bus services but Melton City Council is calling for more – a full network review to provide accessible, frequent, connected bus network.
Only five of the 47 bus routes in the City of Melton meet the minimum service level criteria – and this poor service means only one per cent of Melton City residents use the bus as their regular commute.
One example of poor service is the 455 service to Melton Station. It runs once an hour in the morning peak and takes nearly an hour to get from Harkness to the train station, which is only 15 minutes by car.
There are also no bus connections between the cities of Melton and Wyndham, even though they are neighbouring municipalities and many City of Melton residents work in Werribee or Hoppers Crossing.
Melton City Council has drafted a plan for a reconfigured bus network that updates some existing routes to build a more integrated, responsive, and accessible local transport system – all for no additional operating cost.
The network would be more expansive and have more peak bus routes with 20-minute frequencies.
Nearly 20,000 City of Melton residents who are not currently serviced by a bus route would have one within a five minutes’ walk.
It would mean that a resident in Aintree for example, who could access 530 jobs within one-hour travel time today, could access up to 10,500 jobs within one hour under an improved network.
The Victorian Government is currently undertaking a review of bus networks in Melbourne’s north-east as part of Victoria’s Bus Reform Plan. Melton City Council is asking for a similar comprehensive approach to looking at the whole network.
Labor has made a pre-election commitment to add a new bus service between Eynesbury and Melton and announced a new service between Sunbury and Diggers Rest stations. Victorian Liberals have made a broad commitment to new and expanded bus services state-wide but have not yet made any specific announcements for the City of Melton or the western suburbs.
In depth modelling of possible bus network reconfigurations, including showing what different levels of investment would deliver, is available on Melton City Council’s new interactive transport prospectus, Moving Melton: movingmelton.com.au
Quotes attributable to City of Melton Mayor Cr Lara Carli
The west is in desperate need for a comprehensive review of our bus networks to boost use and reliability and take people where they need to go.
The buses in our city aren’t meeting our growing community’s needs. Whole suburbs and many other areas in our community have no access to bus services. Frequency is low and unreliable, services are indirect, and travel times are close to twice that of travelling by car.
We have done the work already. Our Moving Melton prospectus outlines fully costed options for all parties to consider. All we need is a commitment to deliver a network review for the north-west like has been promised for the rest of the north.
A reconfigured bus network for the City of Melton would provide residents with easy access to frequent buses, and connect them to jobs, services, education and more.
