While the announcement as part of the Victorian budget delivered half-price public transport and a city bus bonanza focused on metropolitan routes, regional communities such as Greater Shepparton continue to miss out on the planning needed to deliver accessible services.
Greater Shepparton City Council and state Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell have both slammed the government for not doing more for Greater Shepparton.
Mayor Shane Sali said the outcome was disappointing.
“Greater Shepparton is a significantly large and fast-growing regional city, and it is unacceptable that we continue to miss out on basic public transport planning,” he said.
“Around 25 per cent of Victorians live in regional areas, yet many residents simply can’t access reliable public transport.
“In some areas you can’t get a bus on a Sunday, and in others services are extremely limited.”
Cr Sali said the issue was not the cost of public transport, but availability.
“Half-price transport only highlights the gaps when there’s no service to catch,” he said.
Both Cr Sali and Ms Lovell said Greater Shepparton’s bus network had not been comprehensively reviewed in 17 years — since 2009 — despite significant population growth, intensive investment in new housing estates, and expanding communities in Shepparton’s growth corridor, Toolamba and Tatura.
Many of the housing estates that have been built since 2009 do not have buses serving the residents, and there is no service that gets workers to the industrial estate.
There is also a lack of bus services connecting Mooroopna and Tatura to Shepparton during the working week, and no services on Saturday afternoon or Sunday.
“For a city of our size and growth trajectory, this level of neglect is unacceptable,” Cr Sali said.
Council has repeatedly raised the need for a review, but even once started, such a process can take 12 to 18 months to complete, meaning any real improvement is still years away.
“Our community has a right to accessible, reliable public transport, and we need the state government to genuinely partner with us,” Cr Sali said.
“Regional cities like Greater Shepparton want to grow and succeed but without accessible public transport, we’re being asked to do that with one hand tied behind our back.”
Ms Lovell said the announcement “proves” that the government does not care about the people of Greater Shepparton.
“Labor’s bus ‘bonanza’ is a betrayal of locals in Shepparton and surrounding towns, who have been waiting years for improvements to the bus network, which has not kept pace with population growth and doesn’t adequately service industrial estates or satellite retail areas to get people to work on time,” she said.
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