Urbis was engaged by the City of Melbourne to provide an understanding of how transport modes contribute to recovery from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The City had implemented numerous treatments to provide improved access for walking, cycling and public transport (as well as parklets) to support the return to the city, for which concerns as to their economic value had been raised, with some suggesting that the pop-up bike lanes be removed to support car parking.

As part of the analysis undertaken by Urbis, a model was developed that allowed us to review the pre-pandemic, during covid and covid recovery contributions of each transport mode accessing the city by the types of work they support, where people are travelling from and each modes contribution to the value of the city economy.  Additionally, we were able to look at each destination zone within the Central City of Melbourne and evaluate the value of different modes in their contribution to access, enabling prioritisation of modes at a block and street level. Subsequently, we have also developed a model that can value the movement components of roadspace. 

While our model primarily considered access into the Central Melbourne area, it is equally applicable to trips within the area as only 3 percent of trips with origins and destinations in the central area (2 kilometres are by car). Additionally, we identified the opportunity that can be achieved by reducing traffic that is inappropriately travelling through the central area and reallocating it to more productive means.

Key findings from our analysis have been endorsed by the City of Melbourne, supporting the prioritisation of walking and public transport. 
This model can be applied by Urbis to any city, block, street, lane or footway in combination with our place valuation model to  determine the value of roadspace based on current or future behaviour and land use.