The Australian city with traffic worse than New York
Melbourne’s traffic flow has become so congested it is now considered worse than New York and Rome.
The first-ever Urban Mobility Index ranked the Victorian capital 25th for traffic flow among a list of 38 major cities, showing that motorists are delayed on average by more than 30 minutes for every 100km they travel
Ross Caldow, Here Technologies’ industry specialist for the public sector, told the Herald Sun the ranking comes on the back of unprecedented research about how Melbourne moves.
“What we can see from a Melbourne perspective is that the city performs quite poorly around traffic congestion,” he said.
“The rankings also come from a comparison of the posted speed to the congested speed … We can see there is a lot going on around the network.”
The city also ranks 23rd in public transport expenses and 36th in public transport frequency.
Western Ring Road, Hoddle Street and West Gate Freeway are among the major roads that come to a standstill, with the average weekday speed considerably lower than the actual speed limit.
From York Street to the West Gate Freeway, the average weekday speed is 30 km/h – half the speed that motorists are allowed to travel.
The research finds that the city’s soaring population growth is a major factor in the congestion. Mr Caldow said there is not a immediate blanket solution to the problem, but rather Melbourne’s private and public forms of transport need to be more integrated.
Last year it was revealed that Melbourne’s congestion woes were making it increasingly difficult for firefighters to attend jobs on time.
CFA chief officer Steve Warrington says volunteers often struggle to drive through traffic to their unit after receiving an alert about a fire.
“Particularly as we get congestion around Melbourne, there can be struggles to get to the fire station to get the truck out,” Mr Warrington said.
