Long walks on gravel along dangerous roads: The fast-growing Melbourne suburbs waiting for buses and trains
In a series, The Age explores why Melbourne’s west has become the nation’s fastest-growing region and what’s holding it back from its full potential.
Pawan Kaur has been forced to walk long distances along an unsafe road to get to her Mount Atkinson home from Rockbank railway station.Credit: Joe Armao
Pawan Kaur felt a growing sense of despair as each Uber driver accepted and then cancelled her booking from Rockbank train station to her home in Mount Atkinson.
Her car was in for a service, and the last of three afternoon shuttle mini-buses operated by developer Stockland on Melbourne’s western edge had already departed.
So, on a dark winter evening earlier this year, the single mother of two began the grim walk along what until recently were quiet country roads. Today, they are busy arterials feeding growing new suburbs in Melbourne’s west, but there are still no footpaths in sections.
“You have to walk on the gravel, through the grass. It’s very unsafe because there are trucks and high-speed cars,” Kaur recalls.
She arrived home almost an hour later. “I felt just like selling the house and moving out,” she says.
Mount Atkinson has sprouted out of dusty red farmland 23 kilometres north-west of the CBD in the past five years.
Kaur moved in three years ago, and says it was one of the few places where she could afford a home for herself and her two sons, now aged 13 and 17. She was attracted by the developer’s vision for a shopping centre, schools and a railway station.
Booming population
Close to 10,000 people live there, and that is expected to grow to more than 17,000 by 2030, according to Melton City Council.
But like in many parts of the growth belt across Melton and neighbouring Wyndham, residents are still waiting for basic services.
In a series, The Age explores why Melbourne’s west has become the nation’s fastest-growing region. We examine what makes it the place to be and what’s holding it back from its full potential.
Kaur’s sons have also had to brave the long walk from Rockbank station – where diesel V/Line trains stop en route to Ballarat – and a 45-minute trek from the nearest school bus stop.
A school bus route will start operating in Mount Atkinson next year. The state government says it is working on plans for a public bus route, too.
Instead, Kaur and her neighbours will continue to join the early morning convoy of residents driving to Rockbank station to snare a spot in its car park before it fills up about 7.15am and overflows onto surrounding roadsides.
“Three years ago, finding a park was easy at the station, getting a seat in the V/Line was easy, but now it’s a competition,” Kaur says.
In the outer west, families are drawn by the promise of affordable homes being built on greenfield sites. The population in Melton and Bacchus Marsh grew 22 per cent between 2019 and 2023 – an extra 40,450 people. Neighbouring Wyndham grew 18 per cent – or by 50,000 people – over the same four years.
And that growth is set to continue at a rapid pace.
The Victorian government’s housing targets, released this year, set a goal for the number of homes in Wyndham to more than double over the next 10 years, and almost triple in Melton.
But the lack of public transport options is already forcing families to own multiple cars and spend hours driving on increasingly congested roads.
Distance is a daily burden for people like Afroz Rifai. On a good day, it takes the 19-year-old engineering student an hour and 20 minutes to travel from Tarneit to Monash University’s Clayton campus.
But if his parents aren’t available to drive him 10 minutes to Hoppers Crossing station, he has to start his journey on the route 181 bus. He waits between 18 and 46 minutes for services, and travels for about 40 minutes.
Afroz Rifai waits for a bus in Tarneit.Credit: Joe Armao
That blows out the travel time to two hours – also involving two train trips and another bus ride – one way.
“Being exhausted by the constant travel can affect your relationship with family members and ... friends. Sometimes, I just have to fall asleep,” Rifai says.
Rifai can’t shorten the 50-kilometre distance to his university campus, but he says the quality of life in his area would improve significantly if frequent and direct bus services connected neighbourhoods to train stations and shopping centres.
John Stone, a senior lecturer in transport planning at the University of Melbourne, says the western suburbs – and particularly the outer growth areas – have poor public transport access, which forces people into expensive car ownership or cuts them off from employment, education and social opportunities.
“The bus system is nowhere near keeping up with population growth, and it’s a system really designed for people who have no choice, no access to a car. It doesn’t work as an alternative to car use because it’s so circuitous and slow and unreliable,” he says.
The state government foreshadowed the reshaping of the bus network into frequent, fast and direct services under the Bus Plan in 2021.
Stone’s research has shown that rerouting the westerns suburbs bus system into a grid network running at 10-minute frequencies could triple the number of residents who could access activity centres within 30 minutes.
The government says it has extended or added 200 bus routes statewide since 2021.
That includes 60 extra services a week on the route 215 (Caroline Springs to Highpoint Shopping Centre) since late 2023.
Funding was also announced in April for new routes connecting the Harpley and Cornerstone estates to Wyndham Vale station, and a new route from Tarneit station to Laverton North.
And the new Mount Atkinson school bus starting in 2025 is one of six new school special routes.
But Stone says: “It’s just putting a couple more strands of spaghetti into this complicated spaghetti bowl.”
Promises made and broken
There is, however, some progress in addressing the west’s transport woes.
Construction of the West Gate Tunnel has caused chaos for motorists over the past six years, but there are hopes the $10 billion new toll road, due to open next year, will ease congestion.
In early December, work began on the redevelopment of Melton station and the removal of four level crossings under a $650 million program.
From 2028, longer, nine-carriage trains carrying more commuters will run from the station and two extra platforms will allow services to run directly between Melton and Southern Cross.
The Department of Transport last month released plans for a new station in Tarneit’s west, one of three additional V/Line stations proposed on the line to Wyndham Vale.
Other projects are not so certain.
The Melbourne Airport rail link, which would significantly ease local traffic and spark business investment in Sunshine, has been pushed back at least four years from its original 2029 opening date.
The Melbourne Metro 2, a new underground train tunnel from Newport to Clifton Hill, has been in Transport Department plans since 2012.
And it’s not clear if or when the state government will deliver on then-premier Daniel Andrews’ 2018 pre-election promise to build electrified train tracks to Melton and Wyndham to bring Metro trains to the outer west.
With the addition of a link to Werribee, an electrified Wyndham line from Sunshine would represent the western section of the Suburban Rail Loop, which Labor first pitched as a 90-kilometre orbital loop encircling Melbourne.
Melton Mayor Steve Abboushi welcomes the Melton line upgrades.
“But … if we don’t start planning and becoming serious about investing further in our infrastructure, people aren’t going to be able to get a train at all,” he says.
The council forecasts that 183,500 people will move next to the Melton rail corridor over the next 30 years, and has called for new stations at Mount Atkinson and Thornhill Park.
Modelling it commissioned shows that even with the upgrades, hundreds of passengers will be unable to board V/Line trains during peak hour by 2041.
Extending the Metro network to Melton by 2041 would deliver more frequent trains and avoid 15,147 car trips in the area every day, the modelling shows.
Al Amin had to walk two kilometres from Rockbank station to the building site of his new home.Credit: Joe Armao
With about 85 per cent of weekday trips in Melton being taken by car, the roads are congested, too.
“It’s about time the government declare that [Westwood Drive] an arterial road and duplicate it,” Abboushi says.
An Allan government spokesperson said the Melton line upgrades would future-proof the line for electrification, while boosting capacity 50 per cent and removing all level crossings by 2026.
“We’re getting on with delivering our record investment in road, rail and buses in Melbourne’s west,” the spokesperson said.
“The opening of the Metro Tunnel and West Gate Tunnel in 2025 will be a game-changer for our growing west, helping people get home sooner, and connecting communities with critical jobs and services.”
An artist’s impression of the new Melton railway station due to open in 2026.Credit: Level Crossing Removal Project
From no cars to two
Back near Rockbank station, The Age meets Al Amin and his wife, Nusrat, as they start a two-kilometre walk along Leakes Road, still lacking footpaths in places, to the site of their new home.
The couple, who are expecting their first child in February, hope to move into their four-bedroom house by mid-2025 from their CBD studio apartment.
“This is the closest [place] to the city where there is still vacant land,” Amin says.
They don’t own a car and anticipate needing to buy two.
“I’m hoping the situation will improve. That’s what I saw in the plan when they sold us the land – a supermarket, public transport,” Amin says.
“It will be a little bit tough, definitely. But that’s the price of getting your own house.”
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