CLIENT INTRODUCTION AND POLICY CONTEXT
2008 Victorian State Supplementary Survey - Residential and Workplace Mobility, and Implications for Travel
The Victorian Government Department of Transport’s focus is to build a safer, fairer, and greener transport system for all Victorians, and thereby create more prosperous and connected communities. This will ensure that transport services continue to meet evolving demands while retaining the liveability for which Victoria is renowned. The Department leads a number of initiatives to help achieve these outcomes, including helping to deliver a substantial expansion of the transport system as outlined in the $38 billion Victorian Transport Plan. Understanding the evolving pressures and trends facing the transport system is a critical activity undertaken to help ensure that the initiatives, plans and programs are developed and delivered successfully.
The performance of Victoria’s transport system is strongly influenced by journey-to-work commuting patterns which are, in turn dependent on the relative distributions of population and employment1. It is vital to understand the implications of these patterns for the state’s transport system and for long-term integrated planning of transport and land use in Melbourne.
One useful addition to the data sources the Department uses to examine these issues is the ABS’s October 2008 Residential and Workplace Mobility, and Implications for Travel survey. This resource will help State transport and planning agencies understand the mutually-dependent evolution of urban structure, demographics and demand for transport. It will help in the continual refinement of transport and the Victorian Government’s policies for the future urban and regional forms of Victoria.
The survey examines the distance and mode of transport of a respondent’s journey to work — for both old and new places of residence to both old and new places of work (if either has changed). These can be compared against other information recorded in the survey, such as the respondent’s age, occupation, or main reason for moving house.
From the 2006 Census, we know that residential mobility is common in Melbourne; almost 40 per cent of Melbourne residents had moved house in the five years before the 2006 Census2. There are number of questions around what the main reasons might be for moving house or changing one's place of work, and whether this depends on age or occupation. While it is known, for example, that younger people move house more often3, the picture is less clear in relation to older people. The survey will help to address whether the use of different modes of transport — and the role of transport in deciding where to move house — differs with age. This in turn will help to inform the policy framework Ageing in Victoria, now being developed by the State government. This policy recognises that transport may be a greater problem for older people, partly because getting around can become harder with age (driving, for example, may become more difficult4 but also because the aged may need to reach specialist services that are far away (for example, the population of rural and regional Victoria is older than the population of Melbourne, but many services for the aged are in Melbourne).
In combination with information already available to the Department of Transport, and data from future surveys, this survey will help improve the Department’s understanding of how and why the demand for transport is changing as Victoria’s population grows, the patterns of employment and life-stages change, and the shape of Melbourne and Victoria evolves.
Department of Transport
Victoria
1. See, for example, Department of Transport (2008), Transport Demand Information Atlas for Victoria.
2. The 2006 Census recorded that 39% of Melbourne residents had moved house in the five years before Census Day.
3. ABS (2009), A Picture of the Nation, p 225.
4. See, for example, Department of Transport (2007), Maintaining Mobility: The transition from driver to non-driver.
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