Tour of the Illawarra? Try being a teenager’s personal taxi driver

One thing I hadn’t considered when my kids started high school was the expansion of their social networks and what this would reveal about the whole Illawarra region.

Most of their social activities had previously been centred around home and primary school in Austinmer, and were accessible on foot or by bike. When high school started, they soon wanted to visit new friends in places such as Figtree, Mt Pleasant, Mt Kembla, Gwynneville, Coniston, Windang and Cambewarra.

Rhiannon and I soon learnt that it was not easy for them to visit these places independently, and we spent several years constantly driving them around the Illawarra.

Most parents and carers provide this private service for their 12- to 17-year-olds primarily because there is no viable alternative. I remember Matilda at age 14, asking for a lift to Mt Kembla one Saturday, and then to be picked up in the evening. I suggested she might catch the bus and she quickly showed me the timetables to prove that there were only three bus services to Mt Kembla on Saturdays, and none of them linked with her plans for the day.

This problem arose continuously during those private taxi years, and motivated both of my kids to get their driver’s licences and purchase their own cars as soon as they could.

We started looking further into the region’s public transport network routes and timetables, and it became very clear that most residents in the Illawarra were suffering from at least one chronic public transport health issue.

If a bus stop or train station is more than 400 metres from your origin or destination, you are being subjected to an excessively long walk due to  “lack of coverage”.

If you miss the bus or train, then have to wait more than 15 minutes for the next one, you are experiencing the stress and frustration of “low service frequency”.

If you are on a bus, but it goes off on a scenic tour of some suburb that is a major detour from your destination, you are being dragged along a time wasting  “circuitous route”.

If a train station is nowhere near the town centre and there is no local bus that links with the train timetable, you have been stranded due to  “poor connectivity”.

Having more than one of these issues is symptomatic of a totally defective system, which is our problem here in the Illawarra.  The result is that most people in the region avoid public transport and drive their cars instead. Wollongong Transport Strategy 2025-2035 revealed that public transport is used for 4 per cent of local trips, whereas private vehicles are used for 79 per cent and the remaining trips are made by bicycle or on foot. 

We truly are a car-dependent community.

We are all acutely aware of increasing traffic congestion on main roads throughout the region, and with 117 000 new homes planned to be built in Wollongong and Shellharbour LGAs over the next 20 years, this gridlock is only going to get worse.

 There are a range of possible solutions to this problem, and we really need to  identify the one which most fairly benefits everyone in the community and is most suitable for growing regional cities such as Wollongong and Shellharbour.

In the meantime, while sitting in our cars, stuck in gridlock and stressing out because we’re late for the under 15s soccer match, it might be handy to remember that we are the traffic.

This is not our fault because right now there isn’t any other viable option.

If you want to get involved in Illawarra Public Transport Action, email us at serveorganiselearn@gmail.com.