By Sarah Deng
The lack of fast, frequent and reliable public transport impacts everyone in Melbourne’s West, but for households with children, the toll is exceptionally high.
For teens who cannot drive, getting involved with the local community feels like an impossibility. Young Westies lose out on the rites of passage afforded to those living in suburbs with better transport
Getting to the shops, school, seeing friends, places of entertainment, and all the teenage extra-curriculars becomes an overwhelming challenge without reliable safe public transport.
Working parents who are time-poor also feel the emotional and financial toll of the extra tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of car trips that come with supporting their teens.
Without better transport young people can’t maintain in-person connections in their communities. When buses do arrive (often infrequent and slow as they are along the ‘spaghetti’ bus routes that span the West), they mainly function as shuttles to the nearest train station, effectively herding Westies out of the suburbs and into the city to work, study and play.
As a result, young Westies are isolated from friends with friendships confined to the school yard, unless there’s an available parent to drop off and pick up. Third spaces like community centres, libraries and parks also become inaccessible to teens without a dedicated chauffeur.
‘It’s difficult to move locations multiple times a day without a car… I really can’t go anywhere else for fun when I [get] bored [because] they’re all so far away,’ says Samantha (anonymised), one Point Cook-based 19 year old.
Learning independence seems an impossible task when teens have to rely on parents for transport. A task as simple as getting from Laverton train station to Seabrook, a seven minute drive away, can take over an hour by bus due to 40 minute delays between bus services.
Infrequent services and the shocking number of no-show buses mean that catching a bus in the West often feels like a happy coincidence every so often, rather than a reliable service that relieves day-to-day burdens for the community.
‘Infrequent local buses leave our teenagers stranded waiting far too long to get to school, work or sport, and losing the independence they should be building at this age,’ says Mount Atkinson resident and Better Buses campaigner Penny. ‘Better, more frequent local buses would give our young people freedom and give the rest of us our time back.’
When the price of missing one bus is losing the first 40 minutes of your casual job, or piano lesson, it’s only sensible for teens to defer to a parent.
Teens living in the western suburbs aren’t empowered to be self-sufficient or even encouraged to go outside. ‘If the buses were more frequent I would probably wander around and explore the West a lot more. I would be in the house less,’ comments Samantha.
While teens could use bikes, increased traffic, congested roads, and lack of proper bicycle infrastructure in the West makes cycling unsafe. Point Cook, presently Melbourne’s most densely populated suburb, is a prime example of this. In peak hour morning traffic, Point Cook Road, the one main vein that services the suburb, is so congested that a 15 minute drive to the nearest station can take 45 minutes. Cranky drivers are crammed bumper-to-bumper right outside of schools, dodging not just other cars, but also children and teens crossing en-masse at multiple points along the road. A young person trying to get around in the West without a car isn’t just at risk of being inconvenienced, but also of being flattened.
Mary (anonymised), a Point Cook mother of three, says she doesn’t feel comfortable with her kids cycling. ‘The road is too busy… it’s too dangerous [and] not for leisure riding. Traffic lights are rare’. She also recalls when the local primary school on Point Cook Road, Lumen Christi, launched a campaign a decade ago to install a traffic light outside the main gate.That plea still has not been answered.
Parents and guardians who take on the extra burden of chauffeuring their teens also experience organisational and financial burdens. Owning and maintaining a car is expensive, but when you’re behind the wheel for a 40-minute round trip to the grocery store or the nearest high school it becomes another ballgame altogether.
Mary estimates that she spent an extra two hours a day driving when her kids were younger. ‘[I was] going from one place to the next without pause… teens can’t go anywhere… if you live in the West and you can’t drive, it’s like being jailed.’ She also estimates that she was sinking around $100 dollars per day in fuel and lost wages, as she was not able to work while supporting her kids’ busy schedules.
Households with two working parents, fewer family members who can drive, or one available car, are struggling to juggle multiple schedules. Teens are choosing between participating less in their communities or feeling like a burden to their working, time-poor parents. ‘I have to rely on others a lot [because] there is no reliable transport,’ says Amy (anonymised), 17.
If buses in the West existed on an interconnected grid (instead of a ‘spaghetti’ map of bus routes that travel inefficiently and infrequently), Westies could begin to view public transport as a real alternative to driving.
The Better Buses campaign is pushing politicians across the political spectrum to recognise the West’s public transport hardships and commit to the ‘Better Buses Grid’. With a grid of interconnected routes, stops a mere 10 minute walk apart, and fast, frequent and reliable buses, we could connect suburbs all over the West and finally make it possible for people to get up and go!
‘Reliable buses aren’t a luxury, they’re the difference between feeling part of a community and feeling cut off from it,’ says Penny. ‘A community can’t grow when its people can’t reliably move around it.’
For more on the transport challenges of Melbourne’s West tune in to the Sustainable Cities podcast via Westsider Radio – westsiderradio.com.au/sustainable-cities
