Article: Two in three Australians drive to work, study of commuting habits finds

[ozbob]

From the ABC News click here!

Two in three Australians drive to work, study of commuting habits finds

Two in three Australians drive to work, study of commuting habits finds

Nearly two in three Australians drive to work in a private car while only one in 10 commuters relies on public transport, a study of census data has found.

Meanwhile, there are 13.3 million registered vehicles in Australia, amounting to one vehicle for every 1.37 people of driving age.

And fewer than one in 10 households gets by without a car, according to social research company McCrindle, which analysed data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Of all adult Australians in full-time work or study, more than seven in 10 (71 per cent) primarily use a passenger vehicle to commute, and nearly nine in 10 adults (88 per cent) use a car to get to places other than work.

The study found an 0.8 per cent increase in the number of car commuters compared with five years ago, amounting to 655,939 people daily..

The only three commuting methods to have declined in share are walking (down by 3 per cent), going as a car passenger (down by 0.6 per cent) and going by motorcycle or scooter (down by 0.1 per cent).

One in five train commuters also uses a car for part of their journey, while one in 10 bus passengers did the same.

More than half of Australians (50 per cent) said the reason they did not use public transport was that no service existed or, where it did, the times did not suit their needs.

Meanwhile, the average Australian car is driven 12,881 kilometres a year, meaning Australians in their combined 13 million vehicles drive a combined 167 billion kilometres annually - the equivalent of driving to Pluto and back 20 times a year.

A disproportionate number of Melbournians drive to work - 107,792 more than do in Sydney, even though Sydney has 400,000 more people, the research found.

However, Melbourne has more bicycle commuters than any other city in Australia (25,594), and 41 per cent of all women who ride to work in Australia live in Melbourne.

And more cars are used to transport Sydneysiders to work than there were used by commuters in the states of Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania combined.

Equally, Sydney has as many people who get to work by train (almost 187,760) as the rest of Australia combined.

Other key points of the research included that:

    Sydney, Brisbane and Perth are the only capitals where bicycles are not in the top-five means of getting to work;
    More Sydneysiders get to work by truck (21,445) than by bicycle (18,811);
    Hobart residents are more likely to drop someone to work;
    Brisbane has two million fewer people than Melbourne but 1,725 more motorcycle commuters
    Far more men than women catch ferries, but far more women than men catch trams
    Men are more likely to drive, and women are far more likely to be passengers
    NT is the "walk to work capital"
    In Sydney, the commutes of 27 workers involved a bus, car and bicycle

[James]

I wouldn't rubbish the study that much (it has some use), but the fact it includes ALL commutes concerns me. Remember, a lot of people don't work in the CBD. If I were to be working out at Garden City, to use a bus would take far more time, and driving counter-peak rarely adds to road network strain. In fact, it can be said generally that cross-town commutes are difficult to cater for, solely due to their nature (i.e. no 'peak' direction, often randomly branching off into the suburbs).

More than half of Australians (50 per cent) said the reason they did not use public transport was that no service existed or, where it did, the times did not suit their needs.

I find this little statistic interesting. Yes, some of the respondents probably do live in woop-woop/have commutes which are not suited to PT, but I expect a lot of these people live in places like the Centenary Suburbs where outside peak, the service is either ordinary, crap or on weekends, non-existent.

[HappyTrainGuy]

More than half of Australians (50 per cent) said the reason they did not use public transport was that no service existed or, where it did, the times did not suit their needs.

I find this little statistic interesting. Yes, some of the respondents probably do live in woop-woop/have commutes which are not suited to PT, but I expect a lot of these people live in places like the Centenary Suburbs where outside peak, the service is either ordinary, cr%p or on weekends, non-existent.

I think we only have to look at the last few posts in the network thread to see how wide spread that actually is unfortunately.

[ozbob]

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Alan Davies ‏@MelbUrbanist

The Urbanist: How easy would it be to shift commuters out of their cars? http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2014/02/04/how-easy-would-it-be-to-shift-commuters-out-of-their-cars/ ...

[SurfRail]

Masses are made up of individuals going the same way.

If you provide the services, they get used. 

Ultimately it is a matter of priority.  Investment has traditionally been based around getting people from suburbs to the CBD, so that is where the spend has gone and patronage has been highest and why little cross-town or orbital high-capacity mass transit exists, not because it is inherently unviable.

[#Metro]

Of course most people use the car. It's better, and the routing is not controlled by a committee of navel gazing politicians (BCC). Duh.

Rip out the current bus network and fix the damn thing. I don't think it is possible or desirable to replace every car trip with PT but there is an awful lot more patronage that can be gained for the current network if existing resources were reorganized to be more productive.

[James]

Of course most people use the car. It's better, and the routing is not controlled by a committee of navel gazing politicians (BCC). Duh.

Rip out the current bus network and fix the damn thing. I don't think it is possible or desirable to replace every car trip with PT but there is an awful lot more patronage that can be gained for the current network if existing resources were reorganized to be more productive.

Yes Lapdog, there is a lot of patronage left untapped in the bus network, but regardless of what you do, short of introducing BUZes everywhere, you are not going to capture trips like me going from my house to my granny's place in Brisbane's east or me travelling to a restaurant in Middle Park, just because that is the nature of the trip. They would require multiple connections, are low demand (there are not masses of people travelling from my house) and do not have a span of hours which would suit society at large.

There is also the ego/car mentality thing. People in Australia (generally) have a tendency to be biased towards the car, especially in Brisbane. I tell people that it might be an idea to catch a bus to the local shopping centre, and I get strange looks. People seem to see buses (especially in Brisbane, from my experience) as oversized taxis to the city, and nothing more. Of course, this is ingrained with the current bus network as it is currently.

[newbris]

I wouldn't rubbish the study that much (it has some use), but the fact it includes ALL commutes concerns me. Remember, a lot of people don't work in the CBD. If I were to be working out at Garden City, to use a bus would take far more time, and driving counter-peak rarely adds to road network strain. In fact, it can be said generally that cross-town commutes are difficult to cater for, solely due to their nature (i.e. no 'peak' direction, often randomly branching off into the suburbs).

More than half of Australians (50 per cent) said the reason they did not use public transport was that no service existed or, where it did, the times did not suit their needs.

I find this little statistic interesting. Yes, some of the respondents probably do live in woop-woop/have commutes which are not suited to PT, but I expect a lot of these people live in places like the Centenary Suburbs where outside peak, the service is either ordinary, cr%p or on weekends, non-existent.

Go through the boarding and alighting data in QR pax survey to see where people get off going to work, mostly city. So in case of Sydney you have 1m per day travelling into the city, rail gets something like 50% of them. So you have another 2m workers headed to work elsewhere, local shops, industrial estates, shift workers, etc for which PT is inhertiatlly useless for them or very inconvient. Then you have about 5million Australian's who live outside a capital city catchment area with very little PT.

People often live where the can afford or want to or combination of both, few would focus this location based on proximity to a railway station. Sydney used to at least get premiums for housing near stations. I doubt Brisbane does.

PT is also known as mass transit, need to focus on moving the masses not the individuals.

Surprised by this. From memory have seen quite a few articles quoting research saying major infrastructure, including trains, increases house prices in the surrounds. Investor forums make a huge study of future infrastructure. Quite a few people I know make good PT a significant part of their house hunting requirements list so stands to reason demand is somewhat higher in better serviced regions I would have thought.