How did you get to where you are today? Personally, I drove the 7 km to work in the ute taking just over 13 minutes. At 7 in the morning there was very little traffic and all I had to contend with was a low hanging fog. I was in the ute because whoever has the least amount of children with them gets the work runabout rather than the family car and I was driving because any other mode of transport available to me (ie bus, train, scooter, bike) would’ve taken me hours to make the same journey.
How we choose to travel from one location to another is ultimately decided by the resources we have access to. When I lived in North Melbourne in my 20’s I rode my bike (bike lanes available for most of the journey), I caught the tram or I walked. Everything I needed to access (workplace, pubs, food - in that order) was within about 5km of home. This proximity to services gave me more options when it came to getting from point A to B.
That time of life also gave me more travel options. There were no children that needed 1000 things within arms reach for their survival - no prams, bags, raincoats, drink bottles, a complete change of clothes, snacks… We could travel light which made us agile and able to use all the travel options available to us.
Fast forward to today and we’re a 1.5 car household (I only count the ute as a half because it’s a 2 seater). For all of our day to day living we drive but we do like to walk into town on the weekend when we have more time. Having just moved house Frank is keen to bike to school but with after school care finishing at 5 most nights that annoyingly doesn’t yet seem to work (ie his bike is too big to fit in the family car).
Our transport needs as a family are obviously going to change as the kids get older but I wonder what transportation will be available to them over the next 10, 20, or even 30 years. Current estimates have Ballarat's population doubling in the next 25 years. The way we chose to get around is going to have to drastically change because simply doubling the amount of cars on the road would be a complete fucken disaster. Even in the 10 years I’ve lived in Ballarat I’ve noticed the thickening of traffic as our population grows. Heaven forbid you have to go across town during school pick up hours.
My metro friends will scoff at our “extra 20 minutes” during major traffic compared to their 1.5 hours to travel 10 kms but Ballarat has a ‘lifestyle’ to upkeep. We don’t live in Melbourne because I don’t want to sit in traffic jams for hours everyday. We need to have an efficient and reliable transport system that will grow as our population does and hopefully one that isn’t focused solely on cars.
On Wednesday this week I had a Future Shapers day about Transportation and we met Dr Luisiana Paganelli, the Principal Transport Planner for the City of Ballarat. Her job is to think about these very things and help set Ballarat up as a more livable city when our numbers swell over the next 25 years. Lui has taken much of her inspiration from European countries who are so much more progressive and thoughtful about sustainable condensed living. There are many cities in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands) where you simply don't need to own a car.
Whole towns have been designed around strong public transport routes and having easy access to shared methods of transport such as car sharing, scooters and bikes. There are mobility hubs that act as a central point to bring all of these different modes of transport together making them easy to access and some towns have even got one single card (like our myki) that cover all methods of travel - so you could scooter to the train station, catch the train, use a e-bike to ride to work all with the same card/ticket. If accessing these services is that simple then people want to use them.
Currently in Ballarat we have been developing ‘car only’ suburbs that only have roads, there is no public transport. We have Michael Poulton, the CEO of Committee of Ballarat, talk to us about the three new train stations that Ballarat needs. Currently there are two, Ballarat and Wendouree but there is need for at least three more (on existing rail line no less) to help turn our regional train line into a more metro style service so people can use it to travel within Ballarat and not just to and from Melbourne.
From micro mobility to mega - we also visited the Ballarat Airport - Did you know we even had one? It is over 100 years old and has been a huge player in WW2 efforts, it currently supports over 32 businesses and plays a pivotal role in Victoria’s emergency fire response.
Cr Samantha McIntosh from City of Ballarat has been a driving force behind that Ballarat Airport Strategy and Master Plan that has just been passed by council. With runway upgrades and a passenger terminal as part of the plan, we can hopefully expect Ballarat Airport to have a strong domestic flight schedule connecting the some 300,000 residents of Western Victoria with the rest of the country without having to go through the absolute nightmare that is Melbourne Airport. It only makes sense to pop a train station on the existing rail line that sits beside the airport making it more accessible to Ballarat and everybody who would rather pull out their own teeth than try and find a park at Melbourne airport.
Much like the rest of Victoria, Ballarat has a lot of work to do. We want to be able to keep what we love about Ballarat (for me its people, proximity to services and opportunities) and help foster a larger, more liveable city that ‘tips its hat’ to our history but ultimately embraces the benefits of the ‘shared economy’ and doesn’t revolves around ‘cars first’. This idea that anything that isn’t a car is considered ‘alternative’ transport needs to be flipped on its head.
In ten years from now I like to think we didn’t need a car as a family of four. Whatever we’re up to we’ll be able to get ourselves there on a variety of different modes of transport. If we want to nip up to Queensland for a bit of sunshine during winter we just catch the train to Ballarat Airport that's 20 minutes up the road. I like to think that central Ballarat is car-free and has that energetic vibe that comes when people actually LIVE where they hang out.
We currently only have 500 people living in the CBD, imagine if there were 2000 people living in awesome (prefab) apartments without cars, all using shared transport from the many mobility hubs we’ll have scattered across town. There is a vibrant nightlife with restaurants that stay open later than 8pm and great outdoor green spaces for communities to come together. I found this great quote from Canadian graphic designer Robert L. Peters that sums it up quite nicely…
Design creates Cultures.
Culture shapes Values.
Values determine the Future.
