Victorian roads crush loaded with 500k registrations in 5 years

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By Leith van Onselen

While certain people on the left keep spruiking for Australia to open its borders, the lived experience in the major cities continues to worsen from excessive levels of immigration.

The latest iteration comes from Victoria, where motor vehicle registrations have ballooned by almost 500,000 in just five years, crush-loading Melbourne’s roads. From the Herald-Sun:

NO wonder our city feels like one giant traffic jam.

Shock new figures reveal 500,000 more vehicles have hit Victoria’s roads in the past five years. And three-and four-car families in outer suburbs are fuelling the boom.

Vehicle registrations have soared 11.5 per cent to 4.7 million since 2011, while the state’s population has risen 10 per cent, to about six million.
And the number of kilometres travelled on Melbourne freeways and arterial roads each year now tops 29 billion, up from 27.6 billion…

So vehicle registrations rose by 482,966 in the five years to 2016. No surprise that this matches the increase in Melbourne’s population (Victoria’s population grew by 572,586):

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Who would have thought, more people means more cars and traffic?

Gee, I wonder how Melbourne’s traffic will fare over the next 35 years as the city’s population balloons by a projected 97,000 people a year to more than 8 million:

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Straw poll:

  1. Do you believe that Melbourne’s traffic congestion will be better or worse under a population of 8 million mid-century?
  2. Do you believe that Melbourne’s living standards will be better or worse under a population of 8 million mid-century?

These are the practical types of questions that the ‘open borders’ advocates continually ignore.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.