What data has council collected?

Council engaged independent specialists to collect and analyse data on Wellington Street to assist in the development of these proposals.

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Baseline Data Summary Report

Council published a Wellington Street Baseline Data Summary Report as part of the ordinary council meeting agenda of 9 September 2025 (section 7.4.2)1. The report brings together data collected across the corridor and covers:

  • Bicycle speeds and volumes
  • Motor vehicle counts
  • Walking volumes
  • Origin-destination vehicle counts
  • Air pollution
  • Noise pollution
  • Car parking utilisation
  • Crash statistics
  • Tree canopy

The underlying data for traffic, cycling, and origin-destination counts was collected in October and November 2023. The raw data files, where we have them, are available for download below.

Motor vehicle volumes and speeds

Automatic Traffic Counter (ATC) equipment was installed at 26 sites across the Wellington Street corridor and surrounding street network. The equipment recorded vehicle volumes, vehicle classes (light and heavy), and speeds continuously for a full week: Tuesday 10 October to Monday 16 October 20232.

The ATC network extended to surrounding streets as well as the corridor itself. Typical weekday volumes on side streets near the Clifton Hill section were: Noone Street 1,806 vehicles per day; Council Street 941; Hodgkinson Street 698 west of Wellington and 1,877 east of Wellington. Volumes on these streets show a distinct increase in the 2:00-4:00 pm period, ahead of the main evening peak, suggesting that school pick-up traffic already uses these side streets.

Speeds vary by location and time of day. At sites in the southern (Collingwood) section of the corridor, where the speed limit is 30 km/h, the 85th percentile vehicle speed reached approximately 40 km/h during overnight and early morning periods, indicating that at those times more than 15% of vehicles were travelling 10 km/h or more above the posted limit. At the site outside Clifton Hill Primary School, where the speed limit is 40 km/h, the 85th percentile speed was generally in the mid-30s km/h during the day, rising to around 36-38 km/h overnight.

Origin and destination

Matrix Traffic and Transport Data Pty Ltd conducted an origin-destination survey across the corridor in October 2023 to establish where traffic on Wellington Street is coming from and going to3.

Number plates were recorded by video at 12 monitoring stations covering both the Clifton Hill and Collingwood sections of the corridor, and side streets including Gold, Budd, Keele, Easey, and Hotham. Matching the plates across station pairs identifies which vehicles are passing through the study area versus those with a local origin or destination.

Monitoring was conducted across three sessions to capture typical peak and off-peak conditions:

  • Wednesday 11 October 2023, 7:00-10:00 am (weekday morning peak)
  • Wednesday 11 October 2023, 3:30-6:30 pm (weekday afternoon peak)
  • Saturday 14 October 2023, 10:00 am-4:00 pm

Cycling volumes and speeds

Cycling volumes and speeds were recorded from multiple sources: camera data from 2023, the annual Bicycle Network “Super Tuesday” count, and the October 2023 ATC monitoring. Wellington Street is classified as a C1 Primary Route in Victoria’s Strategic Cycling Corridors network, the highest classification4. The baseline report includes a chart of daily cyclist counts from October to November 2023; volumes frequently exceeded 2,000 on weekdays.

The baseline report records 85th percentile cyclist speeds of 28.1 km/h at Easey Street (30 km/h speed limit) and 23.9 km/h at Hodgkinson Street (40 km/h speed limit). At both sites, the 85th percentile speed was within the posted limit.

Walking volumes

Pedestrian volumes were recorded using cameras set up to detect and count different transport modes. The cameras cover the period from October to November 2023.

Crash statistics

Crash data for Wellington Street was drawn from the Crashstats database, published by the Victorian Government through the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and the Department of Transport and Planning. The baseline report covers crashes between 2012 and 2022 on Wellington Street between Johnston Street and Alexandra Parade1. Only crashes reported to Victoria Police are captured, representing approximately 1 in 10 total incidents; underreporting is particularly high for cycling and walking incidents.

Key observations from the baseline data:

  • 98 crashes were recorded on the corridor between 2012 and 2022
  • Nearly 70% of crashes between 2018 and 2022 resulted in at least one cyclist being injured
  • 64% of all crashes involved a vehicle turning at an intersection
  • 51% of cyclist crashes resulted from a motor vehicle turning in front of a cyclist; 9% involved a car door opened in the path of a cyclist (dooring)
  • 92% of cyclist crashes occurred on weekdays
  • 2022 recorded the highest number of cyclist crashes in the ten-year dataset; the baseline report attributes this partly to increased cycling volumes following the Stage 1 and 2 upgrades north of Johnston Street
  • Low figures for 2020 and 2021 reflect substantially reduced road use during COVID-19 lockdowns

With roughly 10-20 crashes recorded per year across the corridor, year-to-year figures are subject to statistical variation. The dataset is better read in multi-year aggregates than as annual trends.

Cyclists make approximately 2,000 trips per day on the corridor against approximately 11,000 motor vehicle trips, around 15% of total trips. Yet nearly 70% of injury crashes involved at least one cyclist. On a per-trip basis, that implies cyclists face an injury crash rate roughly 13 times higher than motor vehicle occupants.

Interpreting the trends. The crash record runs to 2022 and the underlying count data was collected in late 2023. Two factors make the trend data harder to read than the raw counts suggest.

Cycling volumes have grown substantially. Volumes on Wellington Street north of Johnston Street were already 56% higher in October 2023 than in 2022, following the Stage 1 and 2 upgrades1. The relevant safety metric is crashes per trip, not total crashes: as more people cycle, the absolute crash count can rise even as the rate per journey falls.

The COVID years complicate trend analysis. Stages 1 and 2 were completed in late 2019. The years immediately following were heavily distorted by COVID-19 lockdowns, which compressed both cycling and motor vehicle volumes in ways unrepresentative of normal conditions. Low crash counts in 2020 and 2021 reflect reduced road use, not improved safety. Any period average that includes those years will be distorted compared to a normal-conditions baseline and the sparse and volatile data makes projection difficult.

Treatment context. 64% of all crashes involved a vehicle turning at an intersection, and 51% of cyclist crashes involved a motor vehicle turning in front of a cyclist. Option 1 addresses this directly by substantially reducing motor vehicle volumes: GHD’s preliminary modelling projects an 87% reduction in the Stage 3 (Collingwood) section and an 83% reduction in the Stage 4 (Clifton Hill) section5. That is a different treatment from physically separated lanes operating alongside existing traffic volumes; crash experience under one approach is not a direct predictor of outcomes under the other.

The modelling (below) also projects a reduction in traffic on Wellington Street south of Johnston Street under Option 1, as vehicles that previously used the northern sections to access the southern corridor would divert to alternative routes.

Traffic modelling

GHD Pty Ltd was engaged by City of Yarra to assess the potential traffic redistribution effects of the proposed options. Their report, the Wellington Street Corridor Upgrade Traffic Analysis Report, was completed on 14 March 20255.

The analysis is described in the report as a preliminary, first-principles desktop assessment of likely traffic shifts. It draws on the ATC data above and on aggregated GPS origin-destination data from TomTom. The assessment covers all four scenario combinations: Option 1 and Option 2 for Stage 3 (Collingwood), and Option 1 and Option 2 for Stage 4 (Clifton Hill).

Under Scenario 1 (Option 1 for both stages, the shared street option), GHD estimates overall traffic volumes on Wellington Street would reduce by 87% in the Stage 3 section and 83% in the Stage 4 section. Wellington Street’s function becomes local access only, with all through-traffic assumed to divert to alternative corridors.

The modelling distributes displaced through-traffic to parallel arterial corridors according to destination, using TomTom origin-destination data. Nicholson Street is assumed to be the major corridor for traffic coming from or going to the north-west of the study area, with a smaller proportion via Brunswick Street. Traffic from or going to the north and east is assumed to divert via Hoddle Street. Some local trips are assumed to shift to the Smith Street and Gold Street corridors. The residential cross-streets cited in local concerns (Noone Street, Hodgkinson Street, Council Street, and Kent Street) do not appear as projected diversion routes for through-traffic in the modelling.

The report recommends that council commission further detailed modelling using the Department of Transport and Planning’s DOMINO mesoscopic traffic model to assess rerouting and network-wide impacts in greater depth.

Help make it happen →

  1. City of Yarra, Wellington Street Baseline Data Summary Report, published as section 7.4.2 of the Ordinary Council Meeting agenda, 9 September 2025 (report begins at p. 257 of the agenda PDF). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. City of Yarra, automatic traffic count data collected by Automatic Traffic Counter equipment at 26 sites, Tuesday 10 October to Monday 16 October 2023 (AUVIC7802). Download: ATC report (Excel). ↩

  3. Matrix Traffic and Transport Data Pty Ltd, OD Surveys around Wellington St, Collingwood and Clifton Hill, October 2023 (AUVIC7802). Download: OD survey methodology report (PDF) and OD survey summary (Excel). ↩

  4. Victorian Government, Strategic Cycling Corridors. Overview document: Strategic Cycling Corridors Overview Document, December 2020. ↩

  5. GHD Pty Ltd, Wellington Street Corridor Upgrade: Traffic Analysis Report, City of Yarra, 14 March 2025 (project 12662382). Download: GHD traffic analysis report (PDF). ↩ ↩2

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