It’s been long thought Australia’s population boom is affecting the daily commute for the worse.
But according to Australian public policy research centre, The Grattan Institute, that is not the case.
Marion Terrill is the Institute's Transport Program Director.
She says commute distances have barely changed over the five years to 2016.
"The media reports are often saying things like their cities are grinding to a halt, we’ve got terrible gridlock, we’re going to have to stop population growing, or stop migration, but in reality it’s true that we’re more crowded and congested than we used to be, but what seems to be happening is that people are making all sorts of adaptations so their commutes are still tolerable."
Ms Terrill says many people have either moved to be closer to their job, or have taken a job closer to where they live.
"The CBDs typically have about 15 per cent of the jobs in the city and then other employment centres like Parramatta for example, for Sydney, it’s a second CBD but it’s only got 2.3 per cent of Sydney’s jobs. And ¾ of all jobs are spread right over the city - that’s true for Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane - and so what it means is that people aren’t all converging in the one place. What they’re doing is they’re going from wherever they live to jobs that are spread all over the city, and it allows us to get more use out of the infrastructure that we already have."
