Chapter summary

This chapter has shown that governance around road space allocation has changed very little over the past century. In general terms, state legislation, plans and policies supersede all council plans and policies—even capital cities like Melbourne. Evidence presented in this chapter indicates that politics and legislatively mandated responsibilities have a powerful impact on road space allocation. With respect to understanding the rules that inform how road space allocation is governed, several important findings can be made.

First, state road authorities have a dominate role in road space allocation. The dominance is supported, stabilised and entrenched by the to two crude road classifications; declared and un-declared road space. Chapter 2 revealed a growing reliance on road classifications to help transport planners resolve the liveability tension.

As this chapter has revealed, road classifications also play a crucial role in setting out the governance of road space allocation. In Victoria, the relationship between road classifications and governance is reinforced at the legislative level. Subsequent iterations in the 1983 Transport Act, 2004 Road Management Act and 2010 Integrated Transport Act have only partially rectified issues stemming from road classifications informing declared and non-declared road space. Since the 1920s, criteria applied in declaring a road has grown to include aspects such as roads with tramlines. Over time negotiations and legislative additions resulted in a declared road network found in Melbourne today that includes roads with and without trams lines. This sets the scene for future conflicts over how to allocate road space. As we see in subsequent chapters, aspects of governance delineate the boundaries of policy discussion, but alone remain are insufficient for understanding how road space allocation tensions are resolved.

Second, stable institutional structures guided by car-oriented ways of governing provide some insight for understanding how road space allocation elements intersect.

Yet, given the objective of this chapter was to specifically identify and examine the rules governing road space allocation, making any specific claims at this point is not appropriate. For example, questions remains regarding to what extent professional knowledge held by transport planners clashed with the rules and organisational

conventions? Answering this question involves analysing how the constitutive elements of road space allocation intersect, which is taken up in subsequent chapters.

With respect to understanding the rules that inform how road space allocation is governed, we can make one more statement in relation to the dominance of state road authorities. As the current state road authority, VicRoads’ dominance in road space allocation can be expanded. First, even today VicRoads is responsible for declaring, and subsequently allocating space on declared roads, and local governments manage and allocate space non-declared road space. This again reflects the first point made above. Secondly, it remains a single-purpose dominant authority critical to allocating road space in Melbourne. This has been achieved by creating a stable, persistent and entrenched presence at the institutional level, capable of weathering Victoria’s volatile political landscape described in this chapter. For example, Table 4.1 presents an analysis of the organisational structure diagrams for VicRoads and the PTC (1989–

1998), when both were operational.

Table 4.1: Summary of VicRoads and PTC executive staff, 1989–1998

VicRoads PTC

1. Number of individuals on all 9 organisation charts from 1989 to 1998 4 1

Number of individuals in (1) that become CEO of either organisation 2 0

2. Number of individuals responsible for road space allocation on at least 5 of the

9 charts 2 1

3. Number of individuals found on 2011 (VicRoads, PTV, DOT) organisational chart

that appeared on at least one chart between 1989 and 1998 4 1

4. Number of individuals in (3) that are currently CEO of either VicRoads, PTV or

DOT 1 1

5. Number of individuals in (3) responsible for road space allocation during the

2009-11 period 3 0

We can see that VicRoads has maintained a level of permanence as an organisation since its creation in 1989—an impressive point when contrasted with the PTC dissolving five years after its creation in 1998. VicRoads has successfully retained key personnel, shifting them across and upwards within different divisions until reaching senior positions.⁴ The PTC did not share this ability.⁵ From a strict senior decision-making standpoint, this has resulted in a road authority capable of weathering Victoria’s volatile political landscape.

4 VicRoads annual reports (1993, 1994b, 1995b, 1996b, 1997, 1998b, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002b, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010b, 2011).

5 Public Transport Corporation annual reports (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997).

Since the early 1980s, Victoria’s institutional planning landscape has continued to expand and contract—a trend that has remained stable and largely based on travel modes. Thus, roads have remained with one authority, public transport planning with another, and land use planning with yet another authority. This arrangement has remained in effect since the turn of the 20^th century. To some extent, VicRoads mandate as well as its dominance in road space allocation reflects an idealised institutional model of transport planning often cited in scholarly studies (Kennedy, Miller, Shalaby, Maclean, & Coleman, 2005). Specifically, it remains a single organisation with the necessary powers, skills and responsibilities critical to engage metropolitan road space allocation tensions (i.e. network). However, evidence presented in this chapter supports other findings that VicRoads inherited its predecessor’s governance and organisational conventions (Mees, 2000; Stone, 2008).

Thus, VicRoads remains the state’s primary road construction and management authority, not the primary multi-modal transport infrastructure authority. This sheds light into how stable institutional structures guided by car-oriented ways of governing, help support similarly stable divisions of professional competencies, values and field of responsibility. Understanding this point further requires examining in more detail how all four constitutive elements of road space allocation intersect and which is therefore the focus of the next chapter.