Public transport in Australian cities

Let’s have a play with some of the working population transport data provided in the 2011 Australian census. I’ll start with a couple of reasonable assumptions, and we can see how they pan out in the data:

1. Assumption #1: The CBD of each respective city acts as a hub for public transport for the whole city
2. Assumption #2: As distance from the CBD increases, the tendency to use public transport decreases; in other words peripheral suburbs should have the lowest level of public transport usage, and inner city areas should have the highest level of usage.

In order to test these assumptions, I have taken each suburb in the four largest Australian cities and determined the public transport usage for workers located in those areas from the census data. I have then calculated the time it takes to drive from those suburbs to the CBD – driving time being used in this case as a real world approximation of ‘distance’ from a CBD.

I have then plotted a graph of PT usage vs driving time for each of the four cities. This graph allows us to:

·         See whether assumption #2 above is true

·         Determine how good a spread of PT usage there is in the suburbs of each city i.e. in effect determine how good the network is for each city

·         Use a trendline to identify any outlier suburbs i.e. any suburbs that have particularly good or bad public transport connections relative to the rest of the city

But before we get into the results of the above analysis, to set the scene, here is a graph of public transport usage for each capital city region in Australia:

Exclusive public transport usage to workplace in Australian capital cities

As you can see above, Sydney has by far the largest amount of public transport usage among its workers. Melbourne and Brisbane have much lower levels of PT usage, and their levels are [perhaps surprisingly] similar. At the other end of the scale, Darwin, Hobart and Canberra have very low levels of public transport usage for their workers.

There does seem to be a strong correlation between population size and PT usage. Indeed they are ranked exactly in the graph above as per their population. This can be explained by the larger population bases providing higher tax revenues which permit more investment in public transport – although per capita, of course, there should be no difference.

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OK, as promised, we’ll now have a look at the relationship between the distance (well, driving time) from the CBD and PT usage in each city and see if we can spot anything interesting in the data.

Public transport in Sydney

Working population public exclusive transport usage vs driving time to Sydney CBD, by suburb

The Sydney CBD – Haymarket – The Rocks area has the highest level of public transport usage in Australia. 65% of workers based there exclusively use public transport to get to work. Likewise, the North Sydney/Lavender Bay and Surry Hills areas come in impressively with just under 50% of workers only using public transport. These areas are very central, very high density and have excellent transport links so this is perhaps to be expected.

The graph shows that the Sydney area in general has a relatively high degree of public transport usage. The trend line has a relatively gentle slope compared with other cities – there is still significant PT usage far out from the CBD. For example, a number of suburbs located 30 minutes drive from the CBD have around 10% of their workers only using public transport.

Sydney also hosts perhaps the most impressive suburban PT usage figure in Australia: that of Parramatta. 28% of workers based in the Parramatta / Rosehill area use only public transport to get to work, despite this area being almost a 30 minute drive from the CBD.

The town of Katoomba, up in the Blue Mountains area west of Sydney also deserves special mention. It is a real outlier with 6% of its workers using public transport to get around yet it is almost 1.5 hours from Sydney CBD. Clearly there is some good public transport up there.

Public transport in Melbourne

Ah, Melbourne. With its wonderful trams running up and down its beautiful Victorian streets and wide boulevards, what’s not to like about public transport in this southern city? Quite a lot, at first glance of the graph below.

Working population exclusive public transport usage vs driving time to Melbourne CBD, by suburb

Melbourne's graph has a much steeper curve than Sydney's graph. This suggests that as distance from the CBD increases, PT usage drops rapidly. Suburbs that are 20 minutes drive from the CBD have approximately 5% PT usage – Sydney has almost 10% usage at this distance.

There are, of course, a number of outliers that buck that particular trend, but the trendline describes the general pattern in the city. The best places for PT usage seem to be South Yarra and St. Kilda. Further out, Mount Evelyn manages a fairly impressive 5%, despite being almost 50 minutes away from the city.

The outer reaches of the Melbourne tram network are approximately 20 minutes drive from the CBD. Perhaps the explanation for Melbourne’s weaker spread of PT usage is that the tram network provides excellent covered within a relatively small area, then the quality of PT drops substantially and the incentive to drive increases.

Public transport in Brisbane

Brisbane is the subtropical focal point of the sprawling, 250km-long, 3 million population, South-East Queensland conurbation and home to the eight lane - and often clogged - Pacific Motorway. So how does public transport usage measure up here? The graph above shows that it follows an even steeper curve than Melbourne; public transport usage drops of at a faster rate the further out from the CBD you go. The Brisbane CBD manages a reasonable 51.6% PT usage, with South Brisbane also bang on trend with around half that level of usage.

Working population exclusive public transport usage vs driving time to Brisbane CBD, by suburb

Suburbs punching above their weight include Fortitude Valley, Indooropilly and Carindale. All three are home to large shopping/commercial districts and good public transport links. However the best performer is St. Lucia, home of the University of Queensland. It manages around 22% PT usage among workers based there; this is roughly double the rate of Carindale (also a good performer). St. Lucia is a 13 minute drive from the CBD and for the sake of comparison, Mount Gravatt - which is also a 13 minute drive - has roughly 6% PT usage among its workers.

Another notable performer is Stradbroke Island (‘Redland Islands’ in the graph above) – this is at least 80 minutes (by ferry and road) from Brisbane CBD, yet 5% of its workers use public transport. The obvious explanation for this is that it is an island so is at the very periphery of the socio-economic influence of Brisbane. Its workers probably use its public transport merely to move around the island, rather than commute onto the mainland and into central Brisbane.

Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast suburbs are excluded from the chart above. However the low levels of public transport usage in these areas should be noted. For example, the suburb with the highest rate of PT usage in the Gold Coast is Broadbeach Waters at a mere 7.6%. Commercial areas such as Southport and Robina also have paltry levels of 3.1% and 3.5% respectively. The Shine Coast fares even worse: its best performing suburb is Buddina / Minyama with only 1.6% of workers using public transport exclusively. Both Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast are cities with extremely decentralised structures. These decentralised cities are examples of urban areas where there is no single CBD that acts as a hub for the whole area; this is counter to the first assumption at the start of this article.

Public transport in Perth

Working population exclusive public transport usage vs driving time to Perth CBD, by suburb

The last city in our analysis here is Perth – like South-East Queensland, it is also notorious for its sprawl along its coastline. The gradient of the trend curve for Perth is steeper still than any of the four cities. This means that public transport usage, despite peaking at a paltry 34% in the CBD, drops off precipitously as distance from the CBD increases. For example, in suburbs located only a ten minute drive from the CBD, average public transport usage among workers is only around 5%. In Sydney the equivalent figure is 26%, in Melbourne it is 14% and in Brisbane it is 7.5%.

Freemantle is the best performing suburbs in Perth – despite being 26 minutes away from the city, its public transport usage is over 9%. This is a level significantly higher than, for example, North Perth, which is 7 minutes away from the city and has usage levels under 7%.

In summary

The best and worst Australian suburbs for public transport usage, categorised by into CBD driving time brackets.

Australia's best suburbs for public transport uptake by workers:

Drive Time	Sydney	Melbourne	Brisbane	Perth
CBD	66%	53%	52%	34%
0-10 mins	Pyrmont / Ultimo, 40%	Docklands, 44%	South Brisbane, 26%	Mount Hawthorn – Leederville, 11%
10-20 mins	Bondi Junction / Waverly 38%	Albert Park, 24%	St. Lucia, 23%	Claremont, 10%
20-30 mins	Parramatta / Rosehill, 28%	Box Hill, 11%	Shailer Park, 5%	Freemantle, 9%
30-40 mins	Hornsby / Waitara, 12%	Springvale South, 6%	North Ipswich / Tivoli, 4%	Armadale - Wungong – Brookdale, 4%
40-50 mins	Mount Druitt / Whalan, 8%	Chelsea / Bonbeach, 5%	Morayfield, 4%	Rockingham, 4%

Australia's worst suburbs for public transport uptake by workers:

Drive Time	Sydney	Melbourne	Brisbane	Perth
0-10 mins	Leichardt / Annandale, 13%	Flemington, 10%	Tarragindi, 5%	Como, 5%
10-20 mins	Forestville / Killarney Heights 4%	Altona Hill, 2%	Rochedale / Burbank, 1%	Winthrop, 1%
20-30 mins	Cromer, 2%	Hillside, 0.4%	Cashmere, 0.3%	Forrestdate / Harrisdale / Piara Waters, 0.5%
30-40 mins	Glenhaven, 1%	Sunbury, 0.5%	Greenbank, 0.3%	Byford, 0.5%
40-50 mins	Mulgoa - Luddenham - Orchard Hills, 0.2%	Wallan, 0.5%	Boonah, 0.3%	Chidlow, 0%

Two overall patterns can be derived from this analysis:

1. As cities get larger, public transport usage also increases per capita
2. As cities get larger, the balance of usage also spreads out through the suburbs more i.e. public transport usage is less centralised and more dispersed in larger Australian cities.

In terms of specific cities, if you want to drive a car, Perth looks like your best bet. If you would prefer to commute by public transport to work, Sydney looks to be the best choice. In terms of suburbs, Albert Park in Melbourne, Parramatta in Sydney or St. Lucia in Brisbane seem to be choices for public transport.

Hopefully this information will be of some value to migrants, whether they be inter-city, interstate or international when it comes to selecting a city to settle in, or a suburb to select. These data provide a quantifiable, objective method of assessing the quality of the public transport services available in Australian suburbs. Hopefully your own anecdotal knowledge matches the conclusions here. If not, please let us know! If you found this article - or any of the other articles on this blog – interesting or useful please let us know in the comments section below.