My Suggestion Of A Bus Interchange And Park & Ride At The End Of The Eastern Freeway

In one of my recent posts, I alluded to one way to alleviate the problem of the Mumbai style bottleneck at the end of the Eastern Freeway is by building a “North-South Link” between The Eastern and the Monash Freeways (even though the purpose of my suggestion was to ease congestion that will be created by the North-East Link on inner eastern suburbs roads).  

The East-West Link that will surely eventually be built will no doubt help this bottleneck slightly by creating a free-flowing motorway. But how, for example, would the East-West Link alleviate the rat-running that takes place through the streets of Collingwood and surrounds during peak hour? Additionally, the East-West Link will be a Tollway which would still encourage drivers to exit at Hoddle Street. 

Suburban sprawl was designed primarily for cars. Before suburbia there were no motor vehicles. Therefore, in a large span of suburbia like Melbourne, people will always drive, as they do in all Australian and American cities. A one-and-a-half-hour public transport trip just doesn’t appeal to many people. 

The North-East Link (under construction) is guaranteed to add to the bottleneck at the end of the Eastern Freeway as the fast-growing population in the northern suburbs will have new route options once the North-East Link is opened. Therefore, the Eastern Freeway bottleneck will only get worse in a fast-growing City like Melbourne where a high percentage of employment is concentrated in the inner-city core. 

Previous studies have shown that a number of cars stuck in the bottleneck are from people with jobs in and around the city who either insist on driving into the city or who have no choice but to drive due to a lack of a better alternative. It’s not just people working in the city who are caught in this bottleneck at peak hour. They could be going anywhere. It could be South Yarra (as I used to), or Richmond (as my wife used to), or Collingwood (as I used to). Trucks commonly use this route to access the West Gate Freeway via Olympic Boulevard. I’m not sure that the proposed eastern section of the East-West Link tollway leading to the tolled Bolte Bridge would alleviate that problem. 

One solution that would contribute to the overall picture, would be to remove multilevel car parks in the CBD. This would force people traveling into the CBD to use other modes of transport instead. But this alone wouldn’t fix the bottleneck problem because only a portion of motorists in the bottleneck are heading into the CBD. At the same time, we want to make life easier for people, not make them feel oppressed by removing options. Giving commuters more options is better for their psychological wellbeing.  

Another option, would be to charge a congestion tax on Hoddle Street and other inner city arterial roads during peak hour. We know, though, that this is virtually impossible to implement unless you are in a dictatorial type of government such as in Singapore.  People just won’t have it. The idea could be sold to the public by getting the populace to vote on what gets done with the revenue collected. But still, just think of those in the outer suburbs needing to commute to the inner city. Many need to use their vehicles to get to work. They already have the raw end of the deal. They pay the most in tolls and petrol and get the least returns for their taxes when it comes to public transport improvements provided by the government. They also sleep less, as they need to commute such long distances. A congestion charge will only add to their burdens. A congestion charge may not be the best answer, though still a good one. 

Another solution, or perhaps a potential component of the overall solution to this bottleneck problem would be to build a large park and ride at the end of the eastern freeway and have a major bus interchange there. 

This could be done by decking the end of the Eastern freeway and building a large multilevel carpark on top of it. Perhaps the decking could be built between the existing Hoddle bridge and the train bridge.  

This idea is based on the same principle as my recent post regarding a “Supersized Car Park” connected to the CBD by an elevated walkway. The idea is that such a large facility at the end of the Eastern Freeway would take many cars off the road at the point where the freeway ends using dedicated lanes. Commuters would then jump on buses heading to different destinations. Buses would head into the CBD and surrounding suburbs.  

During peak times, an express mass transit bus service would run between this bus interchange and the CBD. The buses would likely be long BRT buses that carry 150 passengers. They would run every 5 minutes or so. This would be in addition to other buses that head into the CBD such as the Doncaster bus services that will also stop at this interchange. 

Other services at this park & ride could be: Taxi rank, Airport Bus and possibly even a vertiport built on top for future Uber Air Taxi’s. There would also be eateries and other facilities such as showers and change rooms for cyclists. A project such as this would be very useful even if the East-West Link gets built as it serves a different purpose.