By XAVIER SMERDON
WYNDHAM’S public transport system is struggling to cope with current demand, according to the Deputy Mayor.
Cr Glenn Goodfellow was a guest speaker at a Metropolitan Transport Forum session held at the Melbourne Town Hall last week in which the topic of conversation was “are Melbourne’s growth areas sustainable?”
Cr Goodfellow told a packed room that residents were already frustrated with a subpar transport system.
“It is not fair to ask communities to wait years, sometimes decades for that promise of a public transport system,” Cr Goodfellow said.
“It should be as much a part of the growth areas, just as water, power, sewerage and streets are now. At the present it is simply not good enough.”
Cr Goodfellow said in Wyndham 14,500 households are more than 400 metres from a bus stop and bus frequency was once every 40 minutes.
CEO of the Growth Areas Authority, Peter Seamer, said all is not doom and gloom.
“We have issues out there but guess what, the world is not coming to an end,” Mr Seamer said.
“We need to be looking at things differently than we have in the past and we have to do a lot of hard work. This isn’t going to just happen overnight.
“In this day and age we tend to have an expectation… we expect everything overnight, and that’s very difficult to do.”
Greens member for the Western Metropolitan Region, Colleen Hartland, told Star Mr Seamer did not seem to have his facts straight.
“To say that we are better at planning than 40 years ago is rude and patronising,” Ms Hartland said.
“It’s a pox on all their houses and they’ve really stuffed it up.”
The City of Wyndham has been campainging the State Government to improve funding for major infrastructure, particularly roads, for several years.
