It’s official – Illawarra residents love their cars.
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However, there’s not much love for catching the train.
The latest Census figures include information on how people travelled to work.
Across the three local government areas (LGA) the car is king, especially in Shellharbour where three out of four people drive to work.
In the Shellharbour LGA 73.5 per cent (21,766 people) jumped in the car to get to work, compared to just 1.2 per cent (352) who hopped on a train.
That love affair with the car is higher that the state and federal averages of 57.8 and 61.5 per cent respectively.
In terms of train usage, Shellharbour was well below the state (7.5 per cent) and national (4.6 per cent) averages.
The other LGAs weren’t much better when it came to car use – 68.1 per cent of Kiama residents drove to work as did 66.3 per cent of Wollongong workers.
Just 3.4 per cent of Wollongong LGA residents (2994) caught the train to work, and 1.3 per cent (119) of Kiama workers.
In the Illawarra, the postcodes with the highest percentage of rail commuters were 2508 and 2515.
Not suprisingly, they are the Helensburgh and Thirroul areas, where 9.4 per cent (446 people) and 8.5 per cent (459 people) catch the train.
However, the postcode with the largest number of rail commuters is far and away Wollongong’s 2500 with 641 people jumping on the train to work every day.
The further south you go, the less appealing a train ride is – the Albion Park 2527 postcode is among the worst with just 1.2 per cent of residents catching a train to work.
That’s likely why it has the highest percentage of people driving to work at 74.5 per cent (7332) – or 16.7 per cent above the national average.
The Dapto 2530 and Shellharbour’s 2529 postcodes rounded out the top three in terms of the percentage of population who drove to work with 72.4 and 73.6 per cent respectively.
At the other end of the transport spectrum, 2631 Wollongong LGA residents (3 per cent) walked to work, followed by Kiama’s 2.9 per cent and Shellharbour’s 1.3 per cent.
In terms of walking to work, the suburb of Wollongong is among the best with more than one in 10 residents (13.7 per cent or 1105 people) opting to take a stroll to the office.
To put that into perspective, that’s more than three times the number of people in the suburb who caught the train.
In fact, the number of people who walk to work in Wollongong is higher than the number of rail commuters in any Illawarra postcode.
Which may mean people would rather walk than catch the train.
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
