The May 2024 meeting heard a presentation from RMIT Centre for Urban Research’s Steve Pemberton & Eric Keys who have tracked the growth of aparments and public transport accross Melbourne 2004-2022.

Presentation takeaways

▪ Little evidence for PT changing in response to apartment development
▪ Rather, apartments are developed in areas already well served by PT:one-way integration only between transit and land use
▪ PT has kept pace with population by using larger vehicles – fleet modernisation – generally not frequency increases
▪ Capacity-adjusted services have kept up with population growth at a metropolitan level (in areas within 800m of high-density housing), but not equally across all LGAs or train/tram corridors
▪ No relationship between socio-economic advantage and PT supply per person (in areas within 800m of high-density housing), implying that vertical equity is less of an issue for those living in high-density housing.

Despite wide-spread policy aspirations for integrating high-density housing with public transport in
cities, what is achieved in practice is rarely measured.