Marelen wastes thousands of hours commuting to work. She wants two things to change

It took weeks of trial and error for packaging scientist Marelen Yap to refine her commute from her western suburbs home in Truganina to her office in Collingwood. But at about 90 minutes each way, it’s far from perfect.

Her journey involves a 15-minute traffic-clogged drive to Rockbank train station – a trip that should take half that time – then a 45-minute V/Line train ride in a packed carriage, with services only running every 20 minutes, before a final hop from Southern Cross Station to the city’s inner north.

To get home in the evenings, she spends up to $20 for an Uber ride from Rockbank station. Her husband has the car and there is no bus.

“It was just a shock when, on the first day, there was really no parking spot, and traffic going into the station is horrible,” Yap says.

“But Rockbank to Southern Cross and back is where the main frustration is.”

Yap, who previously lived in New Zealand, moved into her newly built home in Truganina’s Grandview Estate in December with her husband and sons, aged 18 and 15.

She loves her community and its accessibility to shopping centres, beaches and garden nurseries. But she hadn’t been prepared for the transport pain.

Yap is one of tens of thousands of high-skilled workers who live in the west but are forced to leave the region for work and spend hours each day commuting.

The west of Melbourne is the fastest-growing part of Australia, particularly the outer municipalities of Melton – where Yap lives – and Wyndham. But jobs lag badly behind population growth.

Over coming months The Age is increasing its focus on Melbourne’s booming west with a special series examining the positives and challenges the region faces. In October, our reporters will moderate a West of Melbourne Economic Development Alliance’s (WoMEDA) summit to discuss a vision for the western suburbs’ success.

A central challenge for the region is the need to generate more local job opportunities, or see its booming population condemned to a grinding commute.

A new Victoria University report, commissioned by WoMEDA, shows that while the number of working residents of Melbourne’s west is expected to grow by 147,000 by 2034, the number of available jobs will rise by just 66,000.

Within less than 10 years, more than half of the western suburbs workforce will be commuting outside the region for employment, putting more pressure on roads and trains while reducing quality of life for families.

Those living in Wyndham and Melton, set to absorb more than 80 per cent of the growth, will feel the sharpest rise in commuting times.

Today, it takes Wyndham residents almost an hour, on average, to reach the CBD.

Yap has noticed Rockbank’s city-bound platform is getting busier. “Regardless of the day, it’s just really packed. And there are times where there are only three carriages.”

She’d like to see more jobs in the west, but also better public transport: electrification of the Melton line to allow for faster, more frequent services – a state government project that was first promised in 2018 but has stalled – and a vastly improved bus network.

As tens of thousands more people move to the outer west, Victoria University finds that Wyndham workers are expected to spend almost 40 per cent more time commuting for a total of 147,840 hours every morning by 2034. For Melton workers, the growth in total hours commuting each morning exceeds 50 per cent.

Report lead author Janine Dixon, director of Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies, explains that the projected increases are based on population growth. They do not model for growing congestion nor for the post-pandemic, remote-working trend and Premier Jacinta Allan’s plan to legislate a right to work from home two days a week.

“If we have twice as many people doing the commute, that makes the trains and roads more crowded,” Dixon says.

She says it’s crucial for authorities to incentivise the creation of more jobs in the west and improve transport infrastructure.

“We have the chance to get this right,” she says. “The west of Melbourne – Melton and Wyndham in particular – is going to expand very rapidly over the next 10 to 20 years, so let’s not wait until it’s all gridlocked, let’s get ahead of the game.”

While the west’s biggest employers are in service fields such as healthcare and education, as well as manufacturing and logistics, professional jobs are scarce.

The business services sector – which includes IT, marketing and finance – is the largest employer of Wyndham residents, hiring about a quarter of the municipality’s working population, mostly in the CBD and beyond.

WoMEDA is pushing for the development of new or expanded employment precincts in the west, and has modelled four potential hubs for 20,000 workers in Sunshine, Footscray, Werribee and Melton.

The modelling found that a larger precinct in Sunshine would have the biggest overall benefit for the west, as its central location makes it accessible to residents of both Wyndham and Melton.

WoMEDA’s chair Peter Dawkins says the problem of people commuting out of the west is intensifying as the region’s population surges.

“We don’t want … dormitory suburbs with this heavy commuting,” Dawkins says.

“The evidence is clear that commuting is not good for life satisfaction. There’s this very strongly available labour force in the west of Melbourne, so it’d be great to get more employers coming into the region and, of course, the investment in infrastructure that will need to go with it.”

Dawkins warns that Melbourne’s urban sprawl westward is a “ticking time bomb” and the private sector must be convinced to set up in the region.

“There will come a point when the city becomes so large that the strain on infrastructure to support all of that commuting into the city, and the congestion that will result, will be such a big problem that the government, in a way, has to nudge the market in a certain direction.”

Data analyst Manish Baisoya is just one example of the daily brain drain from the west to the CBD. Baisoya moved with his family from inner-city Elsternwick to a new housing estate in Mount Atkinson a few years ago.

He searched for jobs in his field that are closer to home, but other than Target’s national headquarters in Williams Landing, he found nothing.

According to a separate WoMEDA report published early this year, the rapidly growing number of professionals based in Melbourne’s west has significantly outpaced forecasts.

“Professional roles typically employ highly educated people and pay above-average salaries,” the report said. “[But] these professional roles tend not to be local.”

Baisoya commutes to work three to four times a week, first driving his daughter to childcare in Caroline Springs, then continuing to the V/Line station to travel into the city.

He admits the arduous commute wasn’t something he anticipated when his family bought their home.

“On a good day it can be an hour; on a really bad day it can be 1½ hours. And we are not far from the CBD, maybe 23 kilometres,” he says. “I’ve given up on driving; that’s even worse.”

Melton councillor Phillip Zada, chair of LeadWest – an advocacy group comprising the west’s five councils – says it is too common for workers to be unable to access buses and find parking at train stations, or lean on costly Ubers.

“It adds undue stress,” Zada says. “We need to make it easier for people.”

University of Melbourne transport planning lecturer John Stone says the west’s public transport system remains focused on funnelling people to the CBD, with very few options for connecting to different parts of the region. That means that even if jobs are decentralised, roads will be overwhelmed.

Stone says that poor commutes are linked to a raft of social issues as well as financial costs, such as families buying multiple cars.

Stone’s research advocates for a grid network of fast, frequent buses in the west.

“Public transport in the west has lacked leadership and investment for decades, so it’s not meeting people’s everyday needs,” he says.

A Victorian government spokesman said the 2025-26 state budget invests $162 million in new or improved bus services, including in the western growth areas of Tarneit, Rockbank, Mount Atkinson, Aintree, Deanside, Cairnlea, Thornhill Park and Cobblebank.

A $650 million upgrade to the Melton railway line has begun with works to allow longer V/Line trains, he said, while future improvements to Melton station and a new Cobblebank stabling yard are to come. The spokesman said a new station is due to open at West Tarneit next year, while a $4 billion transport “super hub” at Sunshine station will boost the west’s rail capacity.

“We are getting on with rebuilding Sunshine station, which is the first step of Melton electrification and Melbourne Airport Rail and will help to unlock capacity for more services across Melbourne’s west now and into the future,” he said.

The West of Melbourne Summit, presented by WoMEDA with The Age, will be held on October 22-23. For details go to womeda.com.au

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