Jago Dodson from RMIT has been once again batting off media inquiries about the famed VAMPIRE Index he and fellow academics at Griffith University cobbled up nearly two decades ago.
The index was about how fuel prices and far flung housing in the burbs combined to deprive people of a ridiculous amount of their hard earned cash.
We know the story – housing that look cheap on paper but costs a fortune to run; then there’s the two, or even three cars if you have working kids at home. There’s petrol and tolls and bills bills bills.
The blood sucking analogy we reckon was just right.
Today, it’s back thanks to the fuel crisis that no matter what the US achieves by way of a cease fire, will have a long tail to it.
Dodson today is professor of urban policy and it’s his job to understand the complex links between urban planning and transport and how it affects people’s lives. Move over Pauline Hanson, you are out of your depth.
We caught up with Dodson a few weeks ago when we were in town for a conference, and finally, the video has been processed, and you can catch this interesting academic in his own words.
The now aged acronym by the say stands for vulnerability assessment for mortgage, petroleum, inflation risks and expenditure.
Today, the pincer movement of fuel prices and housing costs have risen to the national agenda again and of course it’s all the fault of immigration, the anger mongers would have us believe.
It’s an easy thing to throw mud at the most vulnerable, whether migrants or people living on the fringes of our big cities or in the regions. But Dodson is one of the many hardworking researchers and analysts who actually crunch the numbers to understand how one of the most complex sectors of our economy works its levers and, to be realistic, has the impact to change our world.
We don’t have to mention the politics, right?
And it’s pretty easy to see why there’s been renewed interest in the VAMPIRE Index as people try to unpack the complexity that stirs up the politics.
Fortunately, Dodson updates the original analysis on a regular basis, using Census data, and he says, “the patterns haven’t really changed. And that’s because the policy settings haven’t really changed in a significant way.”
“We really haven’t put a lot of effort as a society into solving these kinds of vulnerability issues.”
Yep, it shows.
Transport
In Melbourne, while there’s been political commitments to public transport services, planning and transport decisions tend to skip fringe areas.
That’s because housing in these new estates is yet to be fully built out and the financial viability of doing so is yet to kick in.
This means people who move in generally have little or poor quality bus services that don’t connect to useful places.
“They just drive their car, and that feeds into itself in the sense of ‘now we’ve got people there, they just want to drive their car, so we’re not going to bother providing them with bus services’.”
In some instances, he says, the lack of interest from public transport authorities has seen developers dip in to operate bus routes themselves, so people can at least get to stations or shopping centres.
Instead of useful infill solutions, we seem captured by the Utopia (television series) fantasy that big dramatic infrastructure projects are the answer.
Dodson says: “We are not addressing these suburban mobility issues. Meanwhile, we’re spending billions and billions of dollars on mega infrastructure.”
For example, the North East Link tollroad project in Melbourne started as a $10 billion project when it was first announced. But costs have a habit of blowing out. It’s now $26 billion.
For the initial sum of $10 billion, “we could probably build one of the best suburban bus services in the world,” Dodson quips.
The West Gate Tunnel is another case in point. Originally earmarked for $500 million, it is now costing around $13 billion.
Instead of funding basic bus services to people with mobility needs, “we’ve been funding mega toll road projects that entrench car dependencies.”
Redesigning the western suburbs
Dodson notes that transport advocates hope to introduce an initiative called Westbus to solve the problem.
Part of this is a comprehensive redesign of a western suburbs bus network to provide much more direct, faster, and more frequent routes in a grid structure with a “go anywhere anytime” service.
The campaign has been especially active in recent times, hoping to capitalise on the looming Victorian state election, due at the end of November.
Dodson likes the idea and says it offers a suite of benefits.
Australia really needs some strong, persuasive examples for change, he says.
Maybe take a look at Switzerland and see what “political willpower” could look like.
But it’s hard to get this issue on the election agenda.
“Elections in general don’t pay a great deal of attention to something as boring and uninteresting as suburban buses, except in moments of crisis, where suddenly it actually becomes a high priority.”
Suburban rail loop
Dodson has also been a critic of the Suburban Rail Loop, which only recently received an additional $3.8 billion as part of the federal government’s 2026-27 budget. The project, which was initially slated to cost around $50 billion, but that too has blown out to closer to $200 billion, caused by design configuration issues and “flawed planning processes”.
Just like in an episode of Utopia, he says, the plan was “drawn up on the back of a serviette between a minister and a few advisors”.
The project did not go through the usual planning processes, such as vetting by the Department of Transport.
“It was a political commitment to the 2018 election, and the government had to follow through on it, so the business case wasn’t done until after the project had been announced.”
It would have been incumbent on the poor public servant then to say, not Yes Minister, but No Minister. (Is this all sounding a bit sit-com?)
The extra money could have gone to extending the tram network by a massive 250 extra kilometres and come with a range of benefits, such as designing boulevards and activity along the network – similar to how Sydney and Canberra are trying to do with their light rail program.
A lost opportunity, again.
Dodson thinks an elevated rail program, like one that Melbourne already has, might have been a better value.
Tunnels are not only expensive, he notes, but the public has never been asked if that’s what they would like their money to be spent on.
The politics
In the end, it’s our planning processes that fall short.
For instance, while the legislation called the Transport Integration Act requires the minister to prepare integrated transport plans for Melbourne to connect land use with transport infrastructure and travel demand, there’s no sanction on the minister if they fail to deliver a plan, Dodson says.
And the public voice is often missing.
The Melbourne 2030 plan opened up a “reasonably good public consultation” with overwhelmingly public support for better public transport, “but the plan said no”.
Instead, the major project that proceeded was the Scoresby Freeway, a toll road in the outer Eastern suburbs. “There’s a disconnect between the way the public is consulted and the way the decisions are made.”
And the reason?
Another well known pattern: there was a “strong lobby group” pushing for toll roads.
Dodson says that since the 2010s, the government has shifted away from the integrated planning process because “it’s too much work, it’s too messy, it’s too complicated, and the government doesn’t control the planning process in the same way, because the technical experts have a role and the public gets to have a say.”
And of course, it “takes too long”.
“Politically, it’s much more attractive to say we’re going to solve this problem with a great big thing. Yes, it’s going to cost a gazillion dollars, but we’re being bold, tough and strong. As a government, we’re getting things done, and in X years’ time, you’ll see it completed, we cut the ribbon, and that’d be great.”
“We need to be basically building a metro line in Sydney and Melbourne every year for the next 25 years, and we don’t have plans that are doing that.”
