Re: Travel patterns (was Re: New form of rail transportation)

["Alex Pout" <alpout@optusnet.com.au>]

Anthony Morton <amorton@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au> wrote in message
8uqajj$g1e$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU">news:8uqajj$g1e$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU...
>
> >Peter Berrett <pberrett@optushome.com.au> wrote in message
>
> >> When people take on a new job their choice of place to live is
influenced
> >> by the availability of public and private transport routes to their
job.
> >> Promoting a radial network has the following effects.
> >>
> >> 1. People are less likely to go for jobs in areas that they do not have
> >>    good transport options to eg across town.
> >> 2. People are more likely to moved to suburbs that have good transport
> >>    options in terms of getting them to their work.
> >>
> >> The effect is that transport journeys become centred on the radial
> >> networks.  The population is servicing the rail network not the other
way
> >> around.
>
> You put your case well, but I think you misunderstand the nature of town
> planning.  It's the rule in virtually any Australian city that the
> infrastructure comes first and the people follow.  Thus in Melbourne, the
> first great age of 'urban sprawl' occurred in the 1880s when suburbs
sprang
> up along the new railways and tramways.  For a while Melbourne was the
> lowest-density city in the world because people could live on their
quarter-
> acre blocks in Camberwell or Caulfield and catch the train into the city
to
> work.  Thus for virtually its entire history Melbourne (unlike Sydney) has
> been a city organised around radial rail corridors.
>
> Remember that at the same time as these first suburbs were growing, there
> were some circumferential rail lines built as well, including the Outer
> Circle, the Rosstown railway and the Box Hill-Doncaster tramway.  But all
of
> these services folded within a decade due to lack of patronage.  They
failed
> to attract the kind of development that had accompanied the radial
services.
>
> Even today in Melbourne, when the vast majority of people travel by car
and
> roads go everywhere, people's 'mental maps' are still oriented radially.
The
> census data bears this out.  Now if you want to encourage people to switch
to
> public transport, having predominantly radially-oriented travel patterns
is
> indeed fortunate, as much of the infrastructure to service radial travel
is
> already there.  So if we wanted to, we could shift a large number of car
> trips to public transport without first having to expend vast sums of
money
> on new infrastructure.

This bears out what I said that Melburnians in particular think the city is
the centre of everything.  Melbourne is Victoria, and Victoria Melbourne
(Just ask Mr Brack's predecessor).

> It's not a question of whether people serve the rail network or vice
versa.
> People will _always_ 'serve' the transport network in your sense, because
> people will always organise their home and work locations according to how
> easy it is to travel from A to B.  The real question is whether it is a
good
> thing to deliberately engineer more dispersed travel patterns, with a
greater
> emphasis on circumferential travel for its own sake.  I can't myself see
any
> good reason to do this, and plenty of bad ones.

Without being picky here, I think you're being contradictory.  First you
said that there has to be sufficient patronage to justify building
circumferential routes/transports methods, now you're saying that
historically the infrastructure comes first then the development follows.
If you use your first point, how was anything built in Australia in the
first place? You don't have to go back too far before there was nothing like
there is today, 212 years at an absolute maximum (OK, 230, for when Cook
landed).

I think that there has been sufficient comment to prove that given options,
people will live and work where ever it is convenient in transport.   For
example, I could live in Campbelltown (god help me) and work in Penrith, and
use the train to get me there directly.  However, in Melbourne, to live in
Cranbourne and work in Frankston (god help me again) would involve two
trips, of around an hour each way, even though there is only a few
kilometres between them.

OK, circumferential rail/tram services failed when first built.  Compare the
population of those areas 100 years ago to what it is now, and say that if
there they wouldn't serve a useful social purpose.

Also, when I lived in Melbourne (Coburg) I went shopping a fair bit at
Northland and Highpoint, and I wasn't the only one who did (my housemates
did as well, for starters).

Also, I'd like to know what your points against dispersion/decentralisation
are.  I for one see no need to concentrate all businesses in the city, and
on a broader scale, in the metropolitan areas across the country (the old
city-country debate).  But that's another topic.