Melbourne: Residents of Outer Suburbs Pay More for Fuel

Melbourne is becoming a city split in two, with residents on the city’s fringes forced to spend thousands on petrol while the wealthy move into areas with the best public transport, according to a leading transport planner says the Melbourne Age.

Peter Newman, Murdoch University academic, told Melbourne’s annual Metropolitan Planning Summit that Melbourne’s average outer-suburban residents use more than three times as much petrol as inner-city residents.

Cheap housing on Melbourne’s fringes is not as cheap as it seems, because poor public transport access in many recently built areas of the city impose massive fuel and car costs.

Residents in Melbourne’s “affordable” suburbs, such as Beaconsfield, Pakenham or Officer, were spending up to 36 percent of their income on fuel, according to Dr Newman.

Meanwhile, motorists have been warned they may soon be facing petrol prices of $1.50 a litre in Australian cities. (That’s 62.5 pence per litre.)

Petrol has hit a nine-month high with motorists now paying an average of almost $1.30 (54.2 pence) a litre and price rises are not going to stop, says economist Martin Arnold.

“Around a quarter of Australia’s fuel needs are imported so the Singapore gasoline price hitting a record high is having an obvious flow-on effect to the Australian petrol price,” he said.

When petrol price became an issue of public concern in 2001, Prime Minister, Mr Howard removed the indexation on fuel taxes.