From: "Brent Wallis" <brent.wallis@gmail.com>
You must live within 10 k of the CBD or dont work in the CBD...cool, happy you can afford the rent and or the real estate..a vast majority of us have to live in the burbs cos we can't.
Well, I live close to the CBD and work close to it, and use bike or tram/train every day. I am renting. I did not want to live "where I can afford to buy" and need two cars and spend 2 to 3 hours every day going to work. I wanted my kids being able to use public transport and bikes in their everyday life. I did not want to drive around all day to "deliver" them because I have no other choice. It's a personal choice and not completely dictated by financial circumstances. The reason you are stuck in the subs (and on roads) is the lack of investment in public transport. I have lived in and visited a few cities in the world and I have found none where you are faster by car than by public transport. Put 100 people in a tram and 100 in cars. The tram is maybe 15 meters long and holds them all. The maybe 50+ cars with the 100 people need ca. 500 meters of road to fit in. The result can be seen in Point Cook where a few ten thousands are trying to "escape to work" every morning. The next train station is a few kilometres away and there is no public transport worth mentioning (a bus every half'n'hour or less doesn't count. It's stuck in the same traffic jam anyway) So the cars are piling up in Point Cook Road and it takes half hour just to reach the freeway. You do not have to be Einstein to predict that. There is no road wide enough to correct this design error. The truth is: Melbourne is sold to developers. Maximal profit means piled up shoe boxes as apartment towers in the city and cheap development in the suburbs without any investment in public infrastructure. There is no planing and regulation worth mentioning. Your "most livable city" will be gone in the next years and decades if you do not wake up. At the moment the best change to stop it is a depression coming in so money dries up. Well, there are signs of that to happen. Last week a German economist called the reliance on coal and mining for Australia's future "almost suicidal". Regards Peter