What are the benefits of public transport?

Imagine any major city of the world without a public transport network. How do people travel to work, to school, or to see friends and family? What are the effects, if the only transport choice available to a city’s four million citizens is by car? The answer is chaos. A city without public transport is a city that regularly grinds to a halt.

Public transport is crucial to the liveability of any city. More than 1.7 million journeys are made on Melbourne’s trains, trams and buses every weekday. However the social, economic and environmental benefits extend beyond those who use it regularly. Here’s a snapshot of the advantages of public transport:

Social

Public transport:

• Helps foster a sense of community. For example, people travelling together are more likely to feel a community connection than those travelling in cars in isolation.
• Encourages people to have a more active healthy lifestyle, particularly if they are walking or cycling to their station or stop.
• Helps reduce injuries and fatalities caused by car accidents.
• Provides accessible transport for people regardless of demographics such as income or age.
• Is less stressful. Rather than driving in traffic or wasting time looking for an elusive car park, public transport passengers can relax and listen to music, play computer games or read a book.

Economic

Public transport:

• Travel is cheaper than owning and operating a car.
• Reduces the need for building vast car parks on valuable land that could have otherwise been used as highly prized office or retail space.
• Reduces reliance on rapidly decreasing oil supplies.

Environmental

Public transport:

• Reduces pollution and road congestion - the more people who travel by train, tram or bus, the fewer cars on the road.
• Requires less land use than road infrastructure.

Key facts and figures

• 504 million trips taken on Melbourne’s trains, trams and buses in 2010.
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts Victoria will grow by 2.3 million people by 2036, with an additional 1.8 million people living in metropolitan Melbourne. This growth rate is expected to make Melbourne the nation’s largest city by 2028.
• In Melbourne, the bus network carries more than 102 million passengers annually, the highest level since the 1970s.
• One full tram can remove as many as 140 cars off the road.
• One full metropolitan train can remove as many as 800 cars off the road.
• A train line moving 20,000 people per hour uses 2.5 hectares of land per kilometre, compared to a freeway moving 5000 people per hour using 10 hectares of land per kilometre (Australasian Railway Association Inc (2000)).
• A single Melbourne train line can move more than 50,000 passengers in one hour
• For every passenger journey made on rail rather than road in Australia’s four largest cities, between $3 and $8.50 can be saved in congestion, safety and carbon emission costs (Australian Railway Association True Value of Rail Report 2011).
• To move 40,000 people per hour per direction, you need:
  - a 140 metre-wide road used only by cars
  - a 28 metre-wide road used only by buses
  - a nine metre-wide metropolitan track bed
• On average public transport generates 35 per cent fewer emissions than car travel, with that proportion nearly doubling during peak commuting times.
• In one year, one passenger train reduces carbon emissions by the same amount as planting 320 hectares of trees. This would cover Melbourne’s CBD, Etihad Sadium and Fitzroy and Carlton gardens (Australian Railway Association True Value of Rail Report 2011).
• Every year Melbourne’s train network alone keeps 190 million car journeys off the roads and saves more than one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Traffic congestion is costing Australians $15 billion annually. This cost is rising (Australian Railway Association True Value of Rail Report 2011).
• In 2009, the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics estimated that 48.3 million of carbon emissions were emitted from road vehicles transporting passengers. Emissions from rail were 40 per cent less for each kilometre travelled by a passenger.