Katherine Copsey, acting mayor of Port Phillip Council, on St Kilda Road. Credit:Joe Armao. The Premier would do well to familiarise himself with the study conducted by Professor Phil Goodwin, Professor of Transport Policy at University College London. He and his co-authors examined what happened to traffic volumes in over 70 case studies, when motor vehicle traffic lanes are reduced. The researchers found that although plans to reduce car capacity are frequently met by alarmist predictions of significant increases in congestion, in reality, it is much more likely for the traffic to "disappear". People use other, more space-efficient modes of transport, travel at different times of the day, and some may choose a different route. Traffic on surrounding streets rarely causes significant problems. It may also be worth reminding the Premier that a 3.5-metre lane can carry many more people by bicycle than the same lane carrying cars. Seven times more cyclists can travel down a one-lane road in an hour compared to a lane carrying motor vehicles.

St Kilda Road will be down to a lane each way for 11 days in July. Credit:Kane Glenister In Melbourne, an average car carries 1.1 people. Is the single-occupant car really the mode of transport Premier Andrews wants to prioritise over the safety needs of people on bicycles on Melbourne's "world-class boulevard"? Is this really the best response from a Premier committed to building Victoria's productivity and economic performance? Surely giving people the option to cycle, through protected bicycle lanes, would be a better bet? Of course, none of these facts mean anything to the Premier of the Education State. His decision to intervene in the process of enhancing St Kilda Road has nothing to do with transport planning; it's a political reaction. The Premier is making a calculation that he has a better chance of winning the next election if he appears tough on cycling and sensitive to the frustrations of voters trying to navigate a single-occupant motor vehicle in an increasingly dense city in which many other people are also forced into car use through a lack of viable alternatives.

Pandering to these frustrations may very well help him not lose seats to the Liberals, but it certainly won't do anything to improve transport or liveability outcomes in Melbourne. The Premier is playing a numbers game. Yes, he may lose some votes from those who care deeply about the safety of cyclists (who may well vote for the Greens anyway), but with some 70-85 per cent of Melburnians using the car as their primary means of transport to work, he feels that appearing as a soldier defending the rights of motorists in the imaginary war between cars and cyclists is his best bet. For the Premier, the choice is easy – focus on the larger group. Unfortunately for the Premier, the time for easy choices in transport is over. Transferring current levels of car use into the Melbourne of the future, with much greater population density, doesn't work. It's a simple matter of geometry. Cars are big. More people in a given space means there is less space per person. Big things don't fit in small spaces. A Premier in the 1960s could afford to prioritise the needs of cars as the key plank in his transport vision. Too many city strategies have been prepared since then showing that this is a failed approach.

The Premier is doing a disservice to Victorians by looking for easy choices that seek to address short-term political goals rather than long-term transport planning. If the Premier is not prepared to make tough political decisions to improve transport in Melbourne, he needs to get out of the way, so people can get on with the job. In the Premier's imaginary war, any victory will be pyrrhic. Using short-term politics as a substitute for evidence-based planning will result in more people being needlessly injured on our streets, and more people unable to make the decision to cycle because the streets are not safe enough for them. Fewer women cycling. Fewer children cycling. More cars with 1.1 people stuck in traffic. Even worse for the Premier, the segment of the electorate to which he is pandering may well vote for the Liberals anyway, who have a stronger track record of playing the game the Premier appears to have entered. Dr Elliot Fishman is Director of Transport Innovation at the Institute for Sensible Transport, a transport research and consulting agency.