Boom out West drives growing chaos on roads

By Dan Silkstone
October 3, 2005

THERE'S little mystery about why traffic on the West Gate Bridge is getting worse. It's all a matter of arithmetic.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics expects Melbourne to grow by 627,000 households by 2030, as a million Victorians set up home. Increasingly they are moving to the outer-west and north. Those areas are catching up to the eastern and south-eastern suburbs, long the population centres of a lopsided city.

Last year, for the first time in Victorian history, housing growth in the northern and western suburbs outstripped combined growth in the east and south. This year, 27 per cent of all housing growth in the city is projected to be in the west.

The Western Transport Alliance, a coalition of local councils, freight groups, unions and the Port of Melbourne, predicts an additional 169,000 households in the west by 2030 — an 84 per cent increase.

In all likelihood, each household will have at least one car. Public transport is scant in most of the new estates and multiple car ownership is already becoming entrenched. Each day, many of these cars will leave suburbs such as Point Cook and Caroline Springs, heading for the city. How they make that journey, and how the infrastructure of the inner-west copes is one of the largest challenges facing governments and planners during the next decade.

"There is a lot of evidence to show that the way Melbourne grows is going through a significant change," said City of Wyndham chief executive Ian Robins. Booming port activity would also lead to increased traffic on the West Gate and across the inner-west. "There are fairly substantial constraints on the road network now, it's scary if you look into the future," he said.

Two of the city's three fastest growing areas are in the west — the cities of Wyndham, around Werribee, and Melton. In the year to June, Melbourne's population increased by almost 45,000. Of that, 34.4 per cent was in the western suburbs.

Most were not relocating from the east, councils say, but from inner-city suburbs as long-time apartment renters in Fitzroy and St Kilda trade up to mortgages. Overseas migrants are also a source for the population boom.

Point Cook, the largest new development in Wyndham, had just 642 households in 2001. Now it has 4500. In 10 years, it is predicted to have 13,900 houses.

Maribyrnong Mayor Michelle McDonald said the lack of an alternative east-west link meant that accidents on the bridge were disastrous for traffic. "If something happens on the West Gate, you're in trouble," she said. "You've got to try and fight your way down Footscray Road or Flemington Road; it gets pretty challenging pretty fast."
