By Heather McNeill
Perth drivers know they’re adding to the increase in road congestion, but aren’t willing to change their ways, an internal Main Roads report has revealed.
According to the Community Perceptions Congestion Report 2022, obtained under freedom of information laws, the majority of West Australians believe public transport is the most effective way to ease traffic, but most refuse to change their mode of transport to help improve the situation, reaffirming Perth’s status as a car-reliant city.
A new report his shone a light on Perth commuters’ attitudes. Credit: Getty Images
“Road users are likely to change their intended travel time and route rather than changing transport mode to ease congestion,” the report found.
Curtin University Sustainability Professor Peter Newman said the report’s findings were unsurprising and failed to address the broader urban planning issue Perth faces.
“The reality is people don’t drive unless they have to, so if you build your city around the car, then people drive. If you ask them, ‘Why do you drive?’, it’s kind of a non-question,” he said.
“Nobody is easily able to change their lifestyle when that means wasting time, so if our city is set up to make it quicker to get everywhere by car, then you build your life around that because time is money and time is life.”
Nearly half of the people surveyed by Main Roads believed public transport had a significant influence on easing congestion (46 per cent), followed by electronic traffic condition signs (37 per cent) and drivers planning their travel time and route (37 per cent).
However, only a quarter of respondents said they would change their mode of transport to carpooling, cycling or public transport, to help ease traffic.
The report also found individual responsibility towards reducing congestion has plateaued in recent years.
Newman said the main barrier to more people using public transport was the need for a bigger network with more access points and regular services.
He said the Metronet rail project would go to improving the system, but more still needed to be done, particularly in inner and middle suburbs.
“It’s not just a Main Roads issue, it’s a planning issue, an urban development issue which means we’ve got to embrace density around these public transport systems,” he said.
“You’ve got to have more people living in the Perth and Fremantle centres and sub-centres and that is starting to happen, for example they’re putting apartments next to Garden City [Westfield Booragoon Shopping Centre] and Karrinyup.”
The 2019 Infrastructure Australia Audit said Perth’s road conditions were worsening, with congestion expected to cost $3.6 billion a year in 2031.
“Perth has one of the lowest rates of walking and cycling commuting trips in Australia,” the report said.
“Each day there are an estimated 4.2 million private car trips in Perth, with 2.8 million of these trips being under five kilometres.”
Patronage on Perth’s public transport network has recently returned to similar levels seen in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, an RAC survey showed 80 per cent of people who worked from home during the pandemic wanted to continue doing so for up to two days a week, which the insurer estimated would take the equivalent of 65,000 cars off the road each day.
RAC general manager external relations Will Golsby said 70 per cent of members wanted the state government to do more to address congestion, but that few were themselves willing to stop using their car as their primary mode of transport.
“We need to get people moving away from their car,” he said.
“Some barriers members report are that public transport isn’t readily available to them due to lack of access points, commute times and also the lack of flexibility.”
Golsby called for a freeze to public transport zone pricing for three years, and improvements to be made to traffic light flow systems as short-term measures to address the congestion.
However, the most popular way respondents to the Main Roads survey believed congestion could be relieved was through adding lanes to freeways and highways.
Golsby and Newman argued strongly against that common misconception.
“It never solves the issue, if you increase capacity of the roads, you increase the number of cars that were there, and you go straight back to the level of congestion that you had,” Newman said.
By 2031, Infrastructure Australia predicted the Mitchell Freeway would be the most congested road in the city, followed by the Marmion Avenue/West Coast Highway corridor and Wanneroo Road corridor.
The Main Roads Community Perceptions Congestion Report surveyed a random sample of 1347 members of the public across Western Australia in mid-2022.
Mains Roads and the Department of Transport were contacted for comment.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.