A tortuous path: The push to get Melburnians to ditch their cars

Andrea Cook made it her New Year’s resolution in 2020 to stop driving her car for trips under two kilometres.

Cook, a town planner from Abbotsford, quickly discovered almost all her journeys were under that distance, and her car was left languishing in her apartment parking space.

“I realised it was quite an expensive proposition to just have a car that mainly sits around,” she says. “I made the decision to sell it.”

Andrea Cook has opted to walk for most of her journeys.Credit: Justin McManus

Cook now walks to most places and takes public transport, using car share services when she needs to travel to outer suburbs.

The Allan government will be hoping others follow Cook’s example. The message this week has been loud and clear: cars are not in.

Plan for Victoria, the government’s new 30-year development blueprint, outlined the slashing of car parking requirements in apartment buildings and suggested car parks around older train stations could make way for homes or open space.

Meanwhile, independent advisory body Infrastructure Victoria released its own report calling for speed limits on local streets be cut to 30km/h to improve safety and livability. It also flagged that road fees at peak times in central areas might be needed in future to deal with intense congestion.

But for all the ambitions of policymakers to ease population pressures by tackling the state’s deeply ingrained driving culture, car ownership statistics suggest Victorians are not ready to let go of their steering wheels.

The number of registered passenger vehicles in Victoria reached 4.16 million in 2024, rising at roughly the same rate as population growth. Public transport use, meanwhile, remains below pre-COVID levels.

Professor Graham Currie, chair of public transport at Monash University, says cars are at the heart of Australian culture and family upbringing. This has been embraced by new migrants, even those from less car-reliant cities.

“They come here and expect to have public transport orientation,” Currie says. “But they also have a cultural affinity to be Australian, and they believe house ownership is a big part of that, and having a car becomes part of that.”

However, Currie says habits are shifting, particularly among young people in inner suburbs with strong public transport links.

The first stage of the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) project, set to open in 2035, will introduce six new stations in Melbourne’s eastern middle-ring suburbs, along with increased housing density in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Unlike existing suburban stations, they will have limited parking options.

Currie backs that decision, saying car parks are a poor use of land.

“They’re big bits of concrete, they’re soulless. No one wants to live next to a car park,” he says.

“SRL stations are there to create a new way of living, which is about living around the railway and not using the car as much.”

Meanwhile, state government data shows there were 13.6 million train trips in December last year, compared with 17.9 million in December 2019.

Currie says public transport use is slowly recovering from the COVID-19 drop, but blames the lingering slump on factors including the rise of remote working and continuing concerns about infection.

The Plan for Victoria report says reducing parking requirements for new developments close to public transport – such as the government’s 60 activity centres – will reduce car use and make housing cheaper. It’s estimated a car space can add about $50,000 to the cost of an apartment.

The plan says: “Housing will be less expensive because it doesn’t include the need to provide costly basement car parking in areas where we want to see apartment-style development, and traffic congestion in these areas will be reduced because there will be fewer cars coming and going.”

Parts of Melbourne City Council have no minimum parking requirements for new apartment buildings after a 2018 study found up to 40 per cent of parking was unused every day.

RMIT researchers have found that not automatically providing a car parking space with every apartment would help reduce car ownership, though better public transport was essential. Between 2004 and 2022, the number of apartments almost doubled in Melbourne, but public transport services within walking distance increased by only 5 per cent.

Planning Institute of Australia state president Patrick Fensham says it is crucial to reduce car reliance in well-connected locations of Melbourne, but any initiatives need to have a parallel infrastructure investment strategy.

“We can’t continue to support road building and car usage at the rates that we’ve seen in the past,” he says.

Victoria Walks executive officer Ben Rossiter – who gave up his car 19 years ago – says policies that discourage car use enable other transport options to be favoured.

Victoria Walks chief executive Ben Rossiter.Credit: Paul Rovere

“People want to live in walkable communities,” he says. “About 20 per cent of trips in Melbourne are undertaken on foot, and this has happened not through good planning and investment, but despite a lack of it.”

It’s a problem state leaders have little choice but to tackle head on. Infrastructure Victoria warns congestion will only get worse as Melbourne’s population heads towards a projected 10.3 million by 2051.

“The city’s roads will struggle to handle more traffic,” its report states. “Even with new and wider roads, motorists face a 46 per cent increase in road congestion between 2026 and 2036.”

Some are sceptical that stripping away parking will effectively curb car ownership.

City of Yarra Mayor Stephen Jolly says many buildings in the inner-city Melbourne municipality have been developed with parking deficits, which has led to chaos in the streets.

Cars and trucks on the Monash Freeway on Friday.Credit: Joe Armao

As in many councils, residents who live in an apartment building or townhouse are ineligible for all-day street parking permits.

“Some residents have to move their car every hour – it’s madness,” Jolly says.

However, he supports slower speed limits. The council last year rolled out a trial of 30km/h zones across local streets in Fitzroy and Collingwood, which Jolly says people have learnt to love.

He wants a multi-faceted approach to cars that involves expanding public transport services and building dedicated bike lanes.

“We have to reduce car ownership in the same way as we have to reduce sugar intake in children,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you stop eating. There’s always going to be cars in this city.”

New 30km/h speed limit signs have been put up across local streets in the City of Yarra.Credit: Jason South

James Voortman, chief executive of the Australian Automotive Dealer Association, understands the need to curb congestion and carbon emissions, but says the reality is that more Australians want to own cars.

Voortman says 2024 was a record year for sales of new cars in Victoria, beating the previous mark set in 2017.

“For us to try to wish away the cars is not going to work,” he says. “We need to work within the framework, and the framework is one in which people really value the ability to have a vehicle.”

Opposition planning spokesman Richard Riordan describes proposals to cut parking as “reckless planning”.

“Cars can at times be a necessary evil,” he says.

“Unless Labor is planning for people to never go to the beach, never go to the snow, never go bushwalking, for them to just remain in their urban bubble, cars will retain their status as a necessity.”

A spokeswoman for the state government said it would continue to prioritise building homes close to public transport.

“Outdated planning rules shouldn’t stand in the way of new homes getting built – that’s why we’re looking to update car parking requirements for homes built close to strong public transport connections, where demand for parking is lower,” she said.

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