John Stone

BSc

Student

Candidacy
MA

Supervisors
Terry Burke and Paul Mees (Melbourne)

Thesis topic
Political and social factors in the decline of mass transit: an investigation of failed policies to rebuild Melbourne's mass transit

Thesis abstract
Melbourne's mass transit system has been in decline for several decades and now carries around 8 per cent of all travel in the city.  Much of the speculation about the cause of the decline of mass transit systems in Australian cites has focused on deterministic physical characteristics of the urban form, including population density, car ownership and job location. However, recent research has shown that the prime cause of the poor performance of Melbourne's mass transit system is not the city's "dispersed" urban form.  

If mass transit carries a much greater share of the urban passenger transport task in Toronto, a city with similar physical characteristics to those of Australian cities, the question that now emerges is: why do Australian cities have such poor transit system use? This project addresses this significant question.