QUINTA ETAPA: ACCIÓN

The car’s normalisation as the primary travel mode motivated the state government to seek a stronger role in road space allocation, particularly at the metropolitan level. The 1932 Transport Regulation Act created the Transport Regulation Board (TRB) and the 1935 Road Traffic Act created the Traffic Advisory Committee. The Traffic Advisory Committee has received less attention compared with the TRB (Anderson, 1994).

The TRB’s main purpose was to reconcile economic tensions between railways which beared their own “capitalisation and maintenance costs” compared with road authorities who had “free access to a transport network constructed and maintained by the community” (Anderson, 1994, pp. 121-122). In comparison, the Traffic Advisory Committee was created to bring uniformity and clarity to traffic regulations, specifically to “make provision with respect to the control of traffic on roads” (State of Victoria, 10 December 1935). Compared to the TRB, the Traffic Advisory Committee had a larger role in road space allocation. It consisted only of local councillors and did not include a police representative as suggested by the MAV sub-committee, and was further charged with developing standardised traffic regulations for Victoria.

Victoria’s first standardised traffic code was introduced on June 11 1936 (The Argus, June 11, 1936). A few days prior to this The Age published the new traffic code in full with extensive pictures and detailed road rules (The Age, June 4, 1936). A film was shown in several movie theatres for a week to promote awareness (The Argus, June 29, 1936). The code enhanced policing powers to enforce driving on the left side of the road, and stopping at major intersections and behind stationary trams (Anderson, 1994). The code also provided an opportunity to add and clarify criteria used by the CRB staff when declaring a road. Roads with trams were classified as a main road;

altered slightly later to include “busy thoroughfares” (Anderson, 1994, p. 139). The additional criteria of roads containing a tramway constructed by MMTB was added a

year later (State of Victoria, 23 December 1936, Section 7). Observance by motorists towards the new traffic code remained conflicting and contested (The Argus, July 16, 1938), and criteria applied by state transport planners to define and classify roads continued to be altered and debated (The Argus, July 15, 1939).

As Melbourne grew, residents began to live beyond existing train and tram networks.

Growth in car ownership and travel did not occur evenly across Australia or indeed Victoria. Many Victorian suburbs still did not have paved roads. The 1954 Town and Country Planning (Metropolitan) Act sought to rectify issues generated from warring government and private planning authorities over increasing infrastructure challenges (The Age, October 19, 1954). The 1954 Act united land use, metropolitan roads, and water and sewerage under MMBW (Dingle & Rasmussen, 1991). Construction of Melbourne’s freeway network began with MMBW’s 1954 Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme (Mees, 2000; Stone, 2008). However, the task of constructing a new freeway network proved difficult for MMBW (Davison & Yelland, 2004; Manning, 1991;

Mees, 2000; Sandercock, 1990; Stone, 2008). In 1974 power to declare, operate and construct roads transferred from MMBW to the CRB (State of Victoria, 14 May 1974).

Figure 5.2: Trial of MTC travel survey, The Age

In 1963, the state created the Metropolitan Transportation Committee (MTC), a separate authority to advise government on planning and developing a coordinated road network.

The MTC brought in North American consultants Wilber Smith & Associates to complete one of the first Australian computerised travel forecasts, “something MMBW accomplished in the 1954 Plan on paper” (Stone, 2008, p. 135). Under Bolte’s tenure as Premier, the science and politics of transport planning were to be separated.

Experts would scientifically study Melbourne and politicians and bureaucrats would develop the metropolitan transport plan (Davison, 2000). Beginning with a trial run in January (The Age, January 29, 1964), for three weeks Melburnians were flagged down by men standing by the roadside to them where they had come from and where they were going (Figure 5.2).

Survey techniques applied by MTC accorded with Australian metropolitan-wide transport studies at the time. The Adelaide Transportation Study (MATS, 1968) was the first such study, followed by Melbourne (MTC, 1969), Perth (RTSSC, 1971) and Sydney (SATS, 1975). UTMS techniques provided the core knowledge supporting MTC’s work (see Chapter 2). MTC’s two year investigation generated three volumes;

the first two provided analysis, the third detailed the 1969 Melbourne Metropolitan Transportation Plan. Using 1985 as the horizon year, MTC recommended 600 km of freeways be built to accommodate projected car travel (Figure 5.3)⁸.

Figure 5.3: Proposed MTC freeway map

Less than a year after publication, a cultural shift occurred (Davison

& Yelland, 2004). Melburnians began to openly question the science of transport planning.

Inner-city communities began opposing being acquired for freeways. Political support for the cultural shift came in 1972 with the election of Rupert Hamer as Premier, and election of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister of Australia. The state and federal campaigns highlighted the politics of urban freeway construction.

Receptive to both freeway and non-freeway solutions, Hamer eventually revoked the more contentious inner-city freeways (Figure 5.4).

8 Figure 5.3 from (MTC, 1969). Figure 5.4 from Hills, B., Willingham, G., & Chubb, P. (October 14, 1974, p.

5). Figure 5.5 from The Argus (October 28, 1938), p. 12.

Figure 5.4: Revised freeway map

In Comparing Figures 5.3 and 5.4, MTC staff appeared secure in their scientific processes. The freeway map is absent any locational attributes to link it to Melbourne. Aside from a black census boundary line, the map reflects anywhere and nowhere in particular. Gieryn (2006) has made a similar point in his analysis of urban studies conducted by ‘The Chicago School’. Following from Gieryn’s analysis, we can see that the strength of MTC’s work was their ability to scientifically jostle between perceiving Melbourne as a reference place for analysis (ie: a laboratory) and a physical place for investigation (ie: field-site).

Figure 5.5: MCC’s proposed car parking ban, The Argus

Conversely, the map in Figure 5.4 hints that there is a city somewhere under the freeway network, with the label City.

Whereas the organisational conventions of MTC reflected advanced transport planning processes at the time, the conventions were strongly questioned by scholars and society. Questioning the expertise of transport planners stemmed from decades of increased car regulations from multiple local and state governing authorities. From the late-1930s to the mid-1960s, cars became more and more regulated. For example, the MCC proposed city-wide parking bans during the mid-1930s (Figure 5.5).

By the mid-1950s, the MCC had introduced parking metres and the state had introduced a standardised parking infringement scheme. The regulations helped to alter organisational conventions and norms. In concert with growth in car travel and new organisational conventions and norms, Melbourne’s road space—at least in inner-urban metropolitan areas—began undergoing significant change. Such change was particularly evident with the introduction of new technologies. Rudimentary road signage and road markings were replaced with electronic signalling and painted line markings. CRB staff first applied road line markings in the early 1930s, which consisted of simple, straight, unbroken lines. Staff shifted to painting broken lines along the centre of road space a decade later, primarily as a method to economise paint (Underwood, 1989, pp. 3-5). MCC began trialling traffic signals in 1930 and constructed its first multistorey car park in 1939 (Lewis, 1995; Priestley, 1984). By international standards, regulating pedestrian movements occurred much later.

Flashing pedestrian “wait-walk” lights didn’t appear in Melbourne until 1956 alongside the 1956 Road Traffic Act (The Argus, January 17, 1956). Though technology aided in allocating road space, it provided a false sense of ordered road space. Competing travel modes still vied for use of road space.