Transport expert calls for Bendigo, Geelong to join light rail resurgence

Almost 20 years ago, transport expert and Professor of Sustainability Peter Newman recommended that the City of Greater Bendigo turn its heritage trams into a public transport option.

After three trials over the following months, the city’s bosses decided not to adopt it, saying people still preferred their cars.

But now, with light rail making a global resurgence, Bendigo Heritage is proposing the city use light rail to connect key destinations. 

The proposal calls for a short city-centre tram route of roughly 1 kilometre linking the Bendigo Station with the retail core and continuing to the Bendigo Art Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Oval precinct.

The proposal also wants trams to run along Barnard Street and connect with the hospital precinct.

Professor Newman says it is time Bendigo returned to the idea of trams as public transport.

“The communities need to want it, as well as the developers,” he said.

“That process should begin straightaway because the opportunities are going to be there.

“The politics is going to be right. These are the areas that people are saying, ‘we want to be like the city centres’.”

Trams ran along Mitchell and View streets until 1972, and the plan by the city’s heritage body is to have battery-powered trams traverse that same path.

Bendigo Heritage chief executive James Reade said the resurgence of trams would improve connectivity for Bendigo residents and visitors.

“Their absence is still keenly felt in the character of the city,”

Mr Reade said.

“We propose a short city centre tram route of roughly 1 kilometre linking the Bendigo Station with the retail core and continuing to the Bendigo Art Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Oval precinct.

“With significant anchors at either terminus, it is a modest line with a mighty job to do.”

The plan would involve reallocating one traffic lane in each of Mitchell Street and View Street to make way for the tram lines and stops.

Figures from the International Association of Public Transport’s report on light rail in 2019 showed that, since 2000, more than 100 cities worldwide have opened their first modern light rail line, and light rail now runs in close to 390 cities.

It was found that in Europe more than 210 tram and light rail systems carry billions of passengers a year, and it is the fastest-growing corner of the sector.