Just days after Shane Geha urged policy makers to double immigration to magically “save our choking cities”, we’ve received more empirical evidence that 15 years of hyper immigration has been an abject failure with New GPS data showing congestion in Melbourne has continued to worsen. From The Herald-Sun:
SPEEDS on some of Melbourne’s most crucial roads are falling as low as 1km/h as concerning new data reveals the extent of the city’s congestion crisis.
Figures obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun reveal average weekday speeds are slowing to a crawl along 10 of Melbourne’s busiest corridors.
The go-slow is shown in location and driver data compiled by leading GPS company Here Technologies.
Alexandra Pde at Clifton Hill and Malvern Rd at Toorak were the slowest thoroughfares identified, reduced to a lowest average speed of just 1km/h at 5.15pm and 7.15pm respectively on weekdays.
Their average speeds were little better at 40.9km/h and 37km/h respectively.
Barkly St in Footscray also crawled to 1km/h — incredibly at 10.30am on weekdays…
Here Technologies senior product manager for traffic services Ben Wilson said the data showed congestion was increasing in Melbourne year-on-year…
“We need to recognise it is not a perfect world and there’s more and more vehicles coming on to the road.
Here’s a time series chart from TomTom showing the massive increase in traffic congestion in both Melbourne and Sydney, which are the primary destination for migrants:
This highlights the lunacy of Shane Geha’s argument that funnelling even more people into Melbourne and Sydney is the solution to congestion.
Even without a further increase in Australia’s immigration intake, congestion in Melbourne will worsen substantially, according to Infrastructure Australia:
As shown above, under all development scenarios – building-out, building-up, or a combination – congestion in Melbourne will unambiguously worsen as the city’s population balloons to a projected 7.3 million people by 2046. Obviously, adding even more people – as suggested by Shane Geha – will make congestion even worse.
