Riding along on Juliana’s epic Melton to Footscray commute

Kurunjang, Melton
16 days until Election Day

It’s a solid two-hour trek to university for 29-year-old Melton resident Juliana Byers, and there’s a four-minute anxiety-ridden window that could turn it into three.

The sun is beating down already by 9.50am on Thursday and Juliana is waiting for the hourly bus at her stop in Kurunjang, a northern suburb of Melton. I’ve made the 20-minute hike with the university student and kinder worker from her home and we’ve both worked up a sweat.

Juliana waits anxiously for the once-an-hour bus from Kurunjang to Melton Station for her train to university.Credit: Rachael Dexter

This will be the first of two 20 minute walks in her journey to Victoria University in Footscray, 40 kilometres away but in the same western region of the city as Melton.

Juliana needs the 9.58am bus to be on time: it’s a 25-minute ride to Melton station (8.5 kilometres away) and once the bus arrives, the city-bound V-Line train leaves four minutes later. From Footscray station she walks 20 minutes to her campus.

A late bus here in Kurunjang means a missed train at Melton Station and an hour’s wait for the next one at 11.30am – precisely when her class at Victoria University is meant to start.

It’s one of the quintessential conundrums for Melburnians who live in the city’s urban fringe: battle hours on public transport or drive on congested under-maintained freeways.

For Juliana, it’s either this two-hour journey by foot, bus, train and foot again, or a 45-minute drive.

“Where’s the incentive to take public transport?” she says.

“I want to know where’s the investment? Why are there not bike racks at bus stops? Why aren’t buses a bit more like the ones in Canberra that have bike racks from the front? Why is there an hour between trains and buses? Where’s the investment in sustainable travel in a climate crisis?”

The issue will be the number one priority for Juliana when she casts her vote in two weeks’ time in the marginal electorate, which has been tagged as a target seat by Labor as it scrambles to hold on to what was once safe territory but is now turning on the party.

Sitting MP Steve McGhie has a 5 per cent margin and is looking to fend off both Liberal candidate Graham Watt and leading independent Dr Ian Birchall, who came within 700 votes of winning the seat in 2018 after preferences.

Labor has committed to removing three-level crossings in the electorate by 2028 and upgrading the V-Line corridor with extended platforms for longer V-Line trains. On Wednesday the Andrews government announced a re-elected Labor government would provide a new bus service for the suburb of Eynesbury, in the south of the electorate, to Melton’s town centre.

“Good public transport is important for local families, getting kids to school, young workers to their part-time jobs and keeping older residents connected,” McGhie said.

Juliana battles poor public transport connections in the seat of Melton.Credit: Rachael Dexter

The government in the last term has also brought in a ‘FlexiRide’ bus service in Melton South which can be booked by residents to travel to shopping centres, train stations and schools.

The Liberal Party has pledged to undertake a review of the Melton bus network “with a view to increase services and providing new routes to neglected and under-serviced parts of the city”.

“The review will determine the appropriate plan for the network that will service the whole community and adequately plan for the future as Melton’s population grows,” said Watt.

Watt has previously decried the lack of bus services in the City of Melton, a similar size to the City of Monash but with fewer bus services, and at The Age’s Melton candidates forum on Tuesday said, “people are laughing about the FlexiRide because...it’s not a good system. And as a local resident, I know it’s not a good system.”

Independent candidate Ian Birchall said bus routes in Melton were “rather convoluted and far between”.

“They require better coordination and simplification of the grid that they cover,” he said. Birchall said if elected he would “like all these issues looked into ASAP and, hopefully, we won’t need more endless planning studies and business cases to string these issues out for another 10 years”.

Two weeks out from election day, Juliana is uncommitted in her vote and unmoved by the announcements so far, as there are no promises for her suburb of Kurunjang.

She wants to see the FlexiRide service extended to suburbs like hers, more frequent buses and direct routes straight to the station.

“There’s a lot of talk about the infrastructure and fixing the roads,” she says.

“These are good things... but I just want to be able to get to uni in under two hours.”

This story is part of our in-depth local coverage of the key seats of Melton, Hawthorn and Richmond at the November state election.

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