Sustainable Cities had our first collective meeting for a while to introduce ourselves and electrify the campaign to get Better Buses in Melbourne's West. 

On Tuesday 12th July, Sustainable Cities had our first big collective meeting since March. 

It was great to get back on board the campaign and begin to accelerate into action ahead of this year’s Victorian State election in November. 

People joined from all across Melbourne and were from many different areas of society; community members, councillors, planning professionals, academics, activists and more all came together for a lively discussion about ideas for ensuring the success of the campaign. 

Senthill Sundaram, who convenes Public Transport Users Forum Wyndham and is a board member of Point Cook Action Group told us about his successful project called Wynbus, which ran a shuttle service for community members between key areas of Tarneit, in areas that are otherwise not serviced by public buses. He also invited along Neeta to share her experience of using the service and how much easier it made her life during that time. 

This is an awesome story of a community organising themselves to meet their own transport needs where the government has fallen short. Individuals should not have to spend their time and energy providing a service that is the government’s responsibility. 

That is why the Better Buses campaign focuses not only on electrification of the bus fleet to reduce harm to the environment and to human health, but also on service improvements that enable a more socially just network that is accessible to everyone across the West. 

We also discussed some exciting ideas for campaign action in the near future. Keep an eye out for opportunities to volunteer, flyering and spreading the word about the Better Buses campaign in the Western suburbs. 
Feel free to reach if you have any skills and time that you think would be useful for the campaign, we are always happy to have more people behind the wheel! 🚌

Our next meeting will be in person in the West (location TBC), on Tuesday 26th July at 6pm. 

Here’s the link to RSVP: https://www.melbournefoe.org.au/sustainable_cities_collective_inpersonmeeting 

We hope to see you there as we build momentum and power to win Better Buses in the West!