By Afia Khan
Buvini Hewamanne spent two hours every day on the bus to a school that was seven kilometres away from her Point Cook home.
Ten years later, she still finds herself waiting for a bus. Hewamanne has now decided to drive to her nearest train station because it takes just five minutes, whereas a bus trip takes 30 minutes, plus up to 40 minutes waiting for it to arrive.
“It’s hard, you know, because I’m a busy person. I need to get places and be on time,” Hewamanne says.
But she’s also concerned about carbon emissions and their impact on the environment.
“For a long time, I actually didn’t want to get my licence because I didn’t want to contribute in my own way to global warming,” she says.
In 2022, Victoria produced a total of 84.7151 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. The energy sector contributed more than 90 percent. Fuel combustion is included in this sector.
The Victorian Government is aiming to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. To meet this, it will be rolling out zero emission buses (ZEBs) from 2025.
Between 2019 and 2022, the State Government introduced 50 hybrid technology buses across routes in Wyndham, Oakleigh, and Sunshine.
Serviced by transport company CDC (ComfortDelGro Corporation) Victoria, the buses reduced fuel use by over 826,000 litres and over 2,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions.
Bernadette Thomas is a Greens councillor for Maribyrnong City Council. Through her role, she advocates for climate change and sustainable transport.
Thomas thinks the hybrid bus fleet is a positive climate emergency response and says every new bus should be an electric bus.
“By not investing in buses, there’s a missed opportunity there to meet climate emissions reduction targets,” she says.
“Expanding the bus fleet so we can have more services to people is really what’s needed. That technology exists, it’s not a mystery anymore.”
Thomas has been involved in the Better Buses campaign for many years and points out the economic inequity of public transport in the west. At community events, she has heard stories of people spending 80 to 100 dollars on Ubers to reach their nearest train station.
“They should be just spending their daily $10 Myki to get the bus from home to the station to get to work.”
“The balance is completely out of work,” she said, “You’ve got to have three cars in the household and everyone’s spending all this money.”
And of course, more cars equals more carbon emissions.
In partnership with the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA), the Sustainable Cities collective led by Friends of the Earth Melbourne is demanding the government to improve bus services for residents like Hewamanne in Melbourne’s west.
David Robertson, who has been part of PTUA since 1996, says people will use the bus if the government can run a good system that’s frequent, reliable, clean, and safe.
“Buses get forgotten about,” says Robertson.
“The west is where the growth is in the future. That’s where the energy, the innovation, where the new technology’s gonna be. So they’ve gotta have the services.”
In 2022, the Melbourne Centre for Cities at the University of Melbourne published a research report on improving transport in Melbourne’s west through a complete ‘clean-slate’ redesign of bus services.
Dr John Stone, a Senior Lecturer in Transport Planning at the University of Melbourne, co- wrote the Better Buses for Melbourne’s West briefing paper with his colleague Iain Lawrie.
“Like everybody who looks at the evidence, I’m absolutely terrified by climate change,” says Stone.
“My job is to use my expertise to promote climate justice and the suburbs of Melbourne are where we need it most. I think it’s really dangerous for them [Government] to ignore what’s happening in the west,” he says..
“It’s essential that the people in the west say, ‘The number one thing we want is buses that allow us to live better lives.’”
