The Real Transport Challenges: A call for vision (2006)
Fact sheets (2006)
Five Year Plan (2005)
“It’s Time to Move”
4 page Summary (PDF 556 Kb)
Full book download (PDF 1.4 Mb)
People throughout Melbourne and Victoria are deeply concerned about the state of public transport. A majority support improved public transport, to help reduce car dependence and alleviate traffic congestion, pollution and road trauma.
Yet our transport planning bureaucracy has not responded in kind. Instead of improved public transport, the road lobby wants to spend billions of dollars on new freeways to make us even more dependent on cars. Meanwhile, little is done to fix the glaring problems with our public transport or even admit they exist.
It’s Time to Move explains why a change in transport policy is needed. Shifting car trips to public transport helps our ‘triple bottom line’: it improves economic efficiency, helps the natural environment, and is good for us as a society.
But people will not get out of their cars and use public transport until public transport offers a high-quality, convenient service. This document explains what must be done. It does not require spending vast sums of money on new infrastructure, but instead requires a new approach to transport planning to curb the power of the road lobby, and a massive improvement in service frequency, connections and coverage. This has proved to be a success in other cities and promises to be doubly so in Melbourne, with its generous tram and train networks.
It’s time to move on from 1950s-style freeway planning to a 21st century vision based on public transport, walking and cycling. This vision doesn’t require us to give up cars or build more high-rise flats. All it requires is a shift in priorities, from building more and more freeways to providing a ‘world’s best’ public transport service.
Price: $10 (Non Members), $7.50(Members) (+$2.50 postage if applicable)
“Greening Melbourne with Public Transport”
Note: This publication has been superseded by It’s Time to Move but is still available for historical interest.
Shows how Melbourne’s transport system can be changed to reduce Greenhouse gases, and make our city a cleaner, safer and fairer place to live. It examines some of the cherished ideas of planner, motorists and local communities and compares them to the successful Toronto model.
Price: $10.
Wrong Way Go Back
Note: This publication has been superseded by It’s Time to Move but is still available for historical interest.
Shows the true extent of the freeway horror planned for Melbourne. It examines the financial insanity of the idea and compares it to the cheap, clean and lasting public transport solution.
Price: $5.
How to Purchase
If you wish to purchase any of the above books, please contact the Public Transport Users Association.
A Very Public Solution: Transport in the Dispersed City, by Paul Mees
Why is public transport so poor in Australian cities? Why can’t it be more like the fast, convenient systems in Europe?Unlike Europeans, most urban Australians live on far-flung suburban blocks rather than in high-density apartments. Most urban travel is to widespread suburban locations rather than to the city centre. It is often argued that fast, efficient public transport is impossible in our ‘dispersed’ cities.
In A Very Public Solution, Paul Mees compares Melbourne’s public transport system with the highly successful system in Toronto-a ‘dispersed’ city very like Melbourne with its suburban sprawl-and sheds new light on a century-old debate.
This debate is particularly important now, as ‘economic rationalists’ move to privatise public transport in Australian cities. We can have European-style public transport, Mees argues, if our different forms of public transport stop competing with each other and start competing with the car.
A Very Public Solution is the first serious work on public transport planning ever published in Australia. It is essential reading for everyone concerned with urban sustainability and our growing traffic problems.
Available through Melbourne University Press