Katrina Marques, who is raising three school-aged children, says the lack of public transport is the most important issue to her before Saturday’s byelection. But she isn’t expecting much after years of empty promises.

“A train line to Rowville in Melbourne’s outer east was first proposed in 1969. But five decades later in the federal electorate of Aston, the car is still king.”

  • AJ Sadauskas
    1•1 year ago

    @AussieWirraway @ajsadauskas@lemmy.ml I’ll have to respectfully disagree on a few of your main points.

    First, the population of the City of Knox alone is around 160,000. Even assuming around 60,000 of those residents in Bayswater, Boronia, and Ferntree Gully are served by the Belgrave line, that leaves around 100,000 people without good access to public transport.

    To put that number into context, the entire population of Ballarat was 101,588 in 2016, and Bendigo is around 100,991 people.

    It’s also roughly 1/10th the population of the entire Adelaide metro area, and roughly equal to the population of Darwin.

    That’s not counting Chadstone or Monash Uni, both of which are major destinations.

    That’s not counting the suburbs between Monash Uni and Rowville.

    That’s also not counting the opportunities for densification and transport-oriented developments if it were built.

    So the catchment is there.

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