The paper compares public transport performance in Melbourne and Sydney with that in four cities from German-speaking Europe. This is followed by a discussion of the political and institutional factors that have contributed to this variation. In the European examples, these factors range from broad scale issues like the re-structuring of large state monopolies such...

The governance and management of public transport systems is an essential component of metropolitan planning and urban management. Most metropolitan strategies in Australia and in other jurisdictions presuppose the provision of public transport. Yet there is often a disconnection between transport plans and land-use schemes. Similarly, metropolitan land-use plans that do integrate with transport plans...

This paper uses a case study of union power in public transport in Melbourne since the mid 1990s to show that union power remains a significant, though now largely hidden, obstacle to modernisation of the design and delivery of public transport in Australian cities.

A team of researchers from four universities argues that the privatisation of Melbourne’s trams and trains has been an expensive failure. By June 2006, the privatised system will have cost $1.2 billion more in public subsidies than continued operation by the former Public Transport Corporation. They propose that the state government should replace the franchise...