Thursday, 6 March 2025

Northcote electorate transport planning

Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (17:17): (1052) My adjournment is to the Minister for Public and Active Transport, and the action that I seek is for the minister to join me on a visit to Thornbury to further understand my community’s current and future use of the public transport network. The Victorian government has identified Thornbury, particularly the areas around High Street and St Georges Road, as part of a broader activity centres plan aimed at delivering more homes around key transport hubs. It is about building gentle density into suburbs that are close to shops, jobs, schools, services and public transport, and Thornbury has so much to offer in this regard. We are a thriving community and a welcoming one. We also know that Melbourne cannot just sprawl outwards, pushing the next generation further and further away from the communities they know and love.

In Thornbury our arterials are already seeing a lot of growth, but at the moment it feels very unplanned and uncoordinated, with very substantial developments going up in an ad hoc way. Activity centres allow us to strategically plan for how whole precincts can sustainably grow to meet the needs of our whole community. That does not just mean more homes; it means more open spaces, more local amenity, better design, inclusive streetscaping and, critically, a view to how community infrastructure and services are improved concurrently with population growth.

In the inner north nothing embodies this imperative more than our unique transport pressures. Congestion is a real and serious issue. Parking is at a premium. As an inner urban electorate, we only have a small footprint for our population size, but we funnel a huge amount of north–south traffic from the northern corridor in and out of the CBD. Because we are bordered by three waterways, there are only so many bridges that you can get in and out on. Separation Street is a skinny, one-lane each way street that came into existence when a property owner in the 1850s sold a few blocks of land and needed an access lane. It is now one of our main east–west arterials.

If we are going to grow and grow well in the inner north, densification needs to be accompanied by a modern and efficient transport network. Do not get me wrong: we have a lot of PT options right now, with a lot of potential to enhance them. In Thornbury this includes tram routes 11 and 86, which traverse the suburb, as well as the Mernda train line and bus routes like the 251, 510 and 508. Thornbury Station is one of our most used stations in the electorate, servicing over 7500 passengers each week, yet it is worth noting that the entirety of the Mernda train corridor that runs through Thornbury, Croxton, Northcote and Westgarth still has boom gates that unfortunately slow everything down. Nevertheless, we have managed to put 165 new services on the line since 2015, the second-biggest increase of any metro train line. On our High Street tram line, the famous 86, level-access stops are being scoped and planned, and if progressed would make a big difference to the usability of that major transport route. These are complex considerations which need to be addressed as our suburbs grow, with an integrated view of where new homes will be built and how people move around.