Methodology / Data inputs
Data inputs
Every number on this site starts as a real, published dataset — government-sourced timetable data, official boundary definitions, and census-based population counts.
Provenance
Vintage table
Some data is not up to date. This table pins every vintage in one place so you never have to hunt through prose to find out when a number was last refreshed.
| Input | Source | Vintage | Refresh | Caveats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timetables, stops, routes | PTV GTFS, Data Vic (7 sub-feeds) | processed 2026-07-12 | per build | Promise of timetable, not delivery. Cancellations and ghost services not reflected. |
| Suburb boundaries | Vicmap Admin locality | current | per build | Scope = Greater Melbourne + commuter corridor (70km of CBD, 657 localities). |
| Population totals | ABS ERP per SA2 | 2024-25 | annual | Latest available. ERP distributed dasymetrically within each SA2 by G-NAF addresses. |
| Population distribution | G-NAF Core addresses | G-NAF MAY 2026 | quarterly | ~1 quarter occupancy lead: addresses register before residents move in. Direction noted in assumptions. |
| Dwelling counts (route catchment) | ABS Census mesh blocks | 2021 | 5-yearly | Superseded for suburb weighting by ERP+G-NAF model. Retained for route catchment only. |
| Jobs | Census place-of-work by SA2 | 2021 | 5-yearly | DZN (Destination Zone) not available in free DataPacks — corrected from original plan. SA2 is suburb-scale, a reasonable match. |
| Roads (car comparison) | OpenStreetMap extract | per matrix build | irregular | Covers 296 suburbs so far — only those inside the OSM/GTFS extract. |
| Congestion pending | DTP Bluetooth / Freeway Travel Time | — | pending | Blocked on API key; toggle built. Only free-flow driving comparisons are live. |
Coverage
Scale of this build
This build scores 28,141 stops across 788 suburbs, with 5.3% unattributed (below the 10% build-failure threshold). Car competitiveness covers 296 suburbs.
The build reports its attribution failure rate honestly and fails if it exceeds 10%. A suburb with zero stops inside its exact locality boundary does not appear in the league table — that is not good service, it is the opposite, and has been confirmed for several growth-corridor localities.
Strength
Machine-readable inputs
Unlike some modelling projects whose inputs are hand-coded across multiple jurisdictions, every Transport Score input is machine-readable end to end. The GTFS feed, Vicmap boundaries, G-NAF address register, and ABS census data are all ingested programmatically with no manual scheme interpretation. This makes the pipeline reproducible by design: anyone with the same data and the published formulas can verify every number.
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