Melbourne's Forgotten Freeways: the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 лис 2024
- The 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan is one of the most significant planning documents in Victoria's history. It still influences transport planning today despite many years of controversy and change.
This starts a series of videos on topics related to the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan. Let me know if you have any requests!
Playlist here: • Melbourne's Forgotten ...
-------------
I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which this video was filmed, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. I pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging and their extensive historical connection to these places.
-------------
My website: philipmallis.com
-------------
MORE INFORMATION
news.google.co...
-------------
SOURCES AND CREDITS
Image source: 'Cabinet to decide traffic plan', The Age: Melbourne. 16 December 1969. news.google.co...
Image source: 'A fight for the city's fringes', The Age: Melbourne. 1 November 1973. news.google.co...
Image source: People sitting on overturned car on Alexandra Parade to protest freeway construction. 'Barricade! :the resident fight against the F19 freeway'. April 1978. trove.nla.gov....
Image source: People sitting at a spit roast on Alexandra Parade to protest freeway construction. 7:30 Report, 23 August 2014. www.abc.net.au...
Image source: 'Axe is set to fall on the freeways', The Age: Melbourne. 14 October 1974. news.google.co...
Image source: 'Road Development 2040', VicRoads: Melbourne. Published in The Age: Melbourne. 11 October 2010. www.theage.com...
Image source: 'United anti-freeway group to stage "brick-in"', Tribune: Sydney. 13 October 1976. nla.gov.au/nla....
Video source: 'Roads At Work. Transport in Australia Ep 2', The Commonwealth Film Unit. 1966. Published: National Film and Sound Archive. • Roads At Work. Transpo...
Video source: 'Archway to Paradise', Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. 1969. • Video
Video source: 'North East Link bus video'. North East Link Authority: Melbourne. • Melbourne's First Dedi...
I appreciate your dispassionate approach to this history - it helps to understand. Such a rarity in the constant battles in seemingly every part of life today.
Oh, and to add by way of edit, that the vicroads 2040 plan proves the maxim that a leopard never changes its spots.
Thank god it doesn’t. This magical unreality that cars are going away is just that. And we need roads as well as trains.
some of the proposals in that 2040 map are quite ridiculous
I am so glad someone has created these videos. When I read up on this plan a few years ago I struggled to find a good deal of detailed info about some of the routes. This is fantastic!
Wow man, a shiver went up my back! as I remember 1973 as a passenger in my fathers truck, an XL Petroleum tanker delivering petrol to servos in Dandenong, Chadstone, and going on what would become South Eastern Freeway later Mulgrave Freeway. was it Malvern rd ? XL Chadstone was on Warrigal rd about 200 yards past where the freeway would be.
old roads are so cool. I WANT THEM BACK !!!!!!
Fascinating stuff, Philip.
My mum worked on that project...
One of the US bigwigs there patronisingly said he wanted to "Invest in one of the last great frontiers in the world" (i.e. Australia). Vomit.
In the 1970's interviewed an inebriated Ray Maher, Minister for Transport at the time who didn't seem to think that building Freeways encouraged car use over public transport...
As we know,the Eastern Freeway was to have had a rail line down the middle. From memory, it was alleged that the Head of the Board of Works owned the land where one of the stations was proposed... Croxford is a name that rings bells...
Nicely done. Your comment that it's still influencing subsequent planning makes sense, especially if large areas of land were reserved in anticipation of construction. Unless the government sold the land off, it's still going to be the easiest route to use. Perth has an interesting situation involving Stephenson Avenue which was proposed as a highway in the 1950s. It also produced massive controversy and to date the 'Stephenson Highway' only consists of two disconnected segments of road, one of which is currently being extended to join up with the Mitchell Freeway.
I dimly remember the Nepean Highway through Bentleigh and Brighton in the ‘70s was suggested to be the last mega highway as it was massively expensive and many homes were demolished for it. Around then people were questioning the value of big road projects. So this highway might have been the last of the Roads are Best phillosophy.
I was wondering why the thumbnail looked soo familiar, i've never seen that view point before. Took me a while to realise it was the corner of Bell Street and Albert St. I use to live near there a long time ago.
Another great video Philip, I'm sure you will have read the essay that PROV posted up a while ago (maybe the end of 2019?) on the protests against the freeways, fascinating stuff!
Thanks! And yes I did come across it, it's a very good summary. I think this is the one: prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2020/deleting-freeways
Of the plans on 2040 map, the Dingley Freeway and outer ring road freeway will be built. I can't see any other freeway getting built without opposition. The reservation for the Healesville Freeway has been long sold
Some sections of the Healesville Freeway were sold, but a large section of it still remains as a future freeway reservation site. It was originally meant to start from the Monash Freeway at Burke Road near Gardiners Creek. Then it was shortened to begin where Riversdale Road ends at Box Hill South. This section was going to run through Blackburn South, but was shortened to begin at Springvale Road on the former Wobbies World site which became the Forest Hill Police Station. As a result of this the section between Springvale Road and Boronia Road was axed, and the remaining site of the reservation lies between Boronia Road in Vermont South near Eastlink all the way through to the Maroondah Highway near Lilydale.
I'd be interested to see what happens to Punt Road and Bourke Roads
Very interesting.
Another fascinating video 👏
I've always been intrigued to know what long term plans might be considered for Punt Rd/Hoddle St. I notice it is highlighted red on the 2040 map. Any clue what that indicates?
Thank you! I think the red line may have been for the recent 'Streamlining Hoddle Street' project, as that 2040 map was leaked many years ago. This involved a lot of work to try to reduce congestion on the corridor bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/mrpv/streamlining-hoddle-street
@@philipmallis ah yes, the P-turn intersections. Thanks!
Great video
You should do the Heasville Freeway
I was thinking exactly the same thing. It is one of the very few, if not the last remaining proposed freeway reservation site in the city of Melbourne. I would like to know about where it was originally planned to go, why certain sections of it were axed, and whether we can expect it to have a freeway built on the remaining reservation site anytime in the future. The proposed Healesville Freeway could also be our last opportunity to see what a freeway reservation site looks like before a freeway gets built on it.
Great vid
is there a link to view the plan online?
Not that I know of. I am tracking down a copy so will hopefully be able to share the report contents soon
the 2040 PDF? www.ycat.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Melbourne2040.pdf
Thank you.
The Age for 5 cents? Today it cost $3.40 for a weekday edition, and 6 pages of ads.
and today it aint worth five cents!
The average worker earned about 65 Dollars per week a that time.
0:38 A fundamental issue with traffic predictions like these is when they're used to justify building more road capacity, which in Australia is almost always the case. Building those roads then induces the traffic that was predicted. If 1960's Melbourne had looked at predicted trips data through the lens of minimising car trips, they'd have built more train/tram/bus lines, cycleways and ensured new outer urban areas were built to be walkable. Total trips data may have remained the same, but today's pie chart would be more balanced.
And those would have been still underused. Another person that doesn’t understand why cars are popular in this country, indeed why cars are popular all together.
Fire a missile thru a dam wall, and youll get an awful lot of water flooding downstream. But please blame the missile not the data suggesting the outcome, or those gathering it.
Thrift and self effacement has been made extinct by a 90 year campaign of hedonism so whereas yu great grandparents would have sensibly lived close to a tram stop or railway station it aint so anymore.
Untill the live stock are prodded and educated to live near a station, or stop, given incentives and rewards to use public transport, then they wont use the service.
As alcohol has been glorified for centuries, its consumption is is the holy grail for the 18 year old mindless teenager; as is the drivers licence and car.
Give public transport the glory , educate ! build new housing around public transport designed to dovetail together.
Sounds like the MATS plan in south australia
Do they call them freeways due to the Californian influence?
Good question! I suspect that's why, given the multitude of US companies that had a large influence on Melbourne's transport and urban planning throughout the mid-20th century
Yet again we have a biased commentator implying that Wilbur Smith & Associates were instrumental in the development of the 1969 Plan. That company was responsible for the extensive data collection on Melbournian's travel behaviour and for the development of the travel models used to predict 1985 travel demands - for all modes. A local study team, responsible to a local Steering Committee answerable to a committee of representative Agency departmental heads, developed plans for road-based, bus, tram and rail modes. In fact it was a senior Tramways officer who insisted that the Study produce the "best" plan, i.e. one that met the predicted demands (at agreed standards) and that it was the politicians role to meet the funding "needs", so preventing the consideration of lower order or staged plans. Politically, a major underlying outcome being sought was backing for the Underground Rail Loop that used overinflated CBD employment figures. The Railways organisation was not otherwise interested in even signalling upgrades and it was not that organisation that put forward the Doncaster or Rowville rail line proposals.
Further, apart from a short outer section of the Study's Healesville Freeway proposal I do not see anything in the 2040 Road Map that represents your 'continuation' of the implementation of the 1985 Freeway Plan. Its outer ring transport corridor proposals are unsubstantiated notions soaking up land acquisition costs, funds that are needed elsewhere and yet there is even an outer-outer (western) ring road. Those proposals are not evidence based.
Bill Saggers, former assigned Engineer to the Study.
Hi Bill, thanks for your comment! As far as the history is concerned, I rely on the primary documentation and prior research by others that I can find on these topics. I'm aware that the Melbourne Transport Committee were the ones who made the decisions but these were heavily informed by the 5-6 years of analysis and technical information developed by Wilbur Smith & Associations with L T Frazer & Associates. As I mentioned in the video, this analysis was heavily influenced by the widespread assumptions in transport planning/engineering at the time that cars and road-based vehicles would be the answer to pretty much all transport needs.
As for the 2040 Road Map, there are a lot of similarities between this and the 1969 map. While there are also some differences, things like the F18, F9, F19, etc. are more or less on the same alignment. Some others are arterial roads or widenings along similar routes/filling the same traffic function as the 1969 routes (e.g. Hoddle St along the F2, Bell St along the F4).
Philip,
If you have relied on people like RMIT's Buxton and their research, you should start again.
Wilbur Smith & Associates, with L T Frazer's local support were responsible for the 5 per cent home interview survey of metropolitan travel plus other surveys of travel in Melbourne in 1964-66, the like of which has not been done so comprehensively since. As I said previously, they developed the multi-facetted travel models which, for the road network, were calibrated against replication of actual period traffic data across a comprehensive set of metrolpolitan-wide screenlines. The Consultant's basic involvement ended with their travel models trialled to forecast traffic levels that conformed with the M&MBW's 1985 land use plan on the Study's initial "Plan 1" for 1985, essentially the M&MBW's 1954 plan. Post 1966, Wilbur Smith's association with the Study was to tweak the mode share model which, originally, was split to into 3 sub-models covering rail travel, tram travel and bus travel respectively. That model produced extraordinary tram loadings , e.g., 243 trams per hour up St Kilda Rd, incidentally with a suggestion that they operate in a trench. The three-way mode share sub-models were collapsed into a single public transport model to allow the separate service characteristics of the three P/T modes to determine outcomes for the three modes. Tram loading levels were halved.
Clearly, you are stretching things to fit your restrictive knowledge and thinking in saying that the 2040 Road Map continues to follow the 1969 plan by citing Hoddle and Bell Streets. Through a series of 6 incremental trial plans using the area-wide road travel loadings, the process for the Study's road network followed a determined effort demonstrated by the final 1969 freeway plan, to break away from planners' fixation with a ring road mentality as opposed to the grid layout you rightly mention, a layout that the distributive grid network of major arterial roads in the Melbourne's south and east has delivered for many years now.
The features to which you should be drawing attention to in the 2040 Road Map is the continuation of outer ring or orbital roads to which I referred to previosusly as not being based on evidence of travel needs or worth, apart from the misguided West Gate Tunnel project and the continuing focus on the West Gate-Monash Freeway corridor.
Bill Saggers
Well said.
@@billsaggers8561 can you please post videos like this? You seem very knowledgeable, I have often wondered what on earth the point of the west gate tunnel is !!
A second river crossing that leads into the cbd is already there, it’s called Footscray rd. A proper solution to fix that bottle neck of a bridge would be to build a tunnel or a bridge that basically duplicates what’s already there !
Struth Bill, its a 3 minute video, you must be awful sensitive to overreact at a mere 3 second glimpse of a long ago name.
What a let down of vid, promised so much, to only.come back in a month when you next upload