I have to admit, I did a double-take at “Australia’s biggest city” referring to Melbourne. But it does in fact appear to be correct, so long as you look at “significant urban areas”, and not the “greater capital city statistical area” or “urban centre”.

To be honest I’m not sure what each of these is supposed to mean. GCCSA is at least clear in that it’s the SUA of the main city plus a few others (Central Coast and Bacchus Marsh & Gisborne, respectively), but what is SUA vs UC? Clearly neither is as limited as “city council area”, but beyond that? 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, this is certainly not a problem unique to Melbourne. It’s been quite a while since I’ve made it down there, but the perception I get is that yous have a lot better options for public transport than we do up in the sunshine state. And at the very least,

But it’s the difference between an hour-and-a-half of travel time, compared to maybe 30 or 40 minutes

Is incredibly relatable here, too. It’s a problem across the entire country, as well as in other anglosphere countries around the world. We desperately need a wide-spread cultural and political change when it comes to transport and city planning. That means more and more frequent public transport. More public transport routes that aren’t solely designed to get into and out of the CBD. More and better active transport routes. Better zoning laws to enable more people to live closer to where they want to go. And it also necessitates not spending billions upon billions of dollars on road-widening to keep making cars more and more appealing.

This article was much better than I was expecting, honestly, touching on non-CBD routes, congestion charging, and building more in areas with pre-existing good public transport. But it was all so very surface-level. More articles like this, for Melbourne, for other Australian cities, and at the national level, is great. But even greater would be more articles that allow themselves to really delve in present a clear vision for a better future.