Shane Sali has seen Greater Shepparton change dramatically in his lifetime. Born and raised in the Victorian regional town of Shepparton, north of Melbourne and not far from the New South Wales border, he’s seen the hub rise and swell through growth and challenges. As the town has evolved through an influx of people and businesses, he says one key issue has prevented Greater Shepparton from realising its true potential.
“The bus network has been a talking point in Greater Shepparton for a number of years,” he told ABC.
“This has been amplified over the past 10 years as we’ve seen significant residential growth into new estates, while some of our key employers have expanded their footprint.
“It means we haven’t been able to deliver a flexible or accessible public transport network for quite some time.”
Now in his fourth year as the Mayor of Greater Shepparton, Sali is one of many in the region pushing for changes to be made to the bus network. It’s been 18 years since the Victorian government and its Department for Transport and Planning (DTP) conducted a bus network review in the Greater Shepparton area. In that time, the entire township has changed. Sali says the current bus network devised from the last review in the late 2000s now ends halfway through fast-growing estates, meaning many residents can’t access public transport.
“This significant growth across our residential estates and our manufacturing businesses means our existing bus stops end in the middle of large established estates – people can only get halfway into an estate nowadays,” he says.
“As our workforce increases, more people want access to public transport but can’t get near buses to go to work at some of our largest employers.”
Sali says advocacy first started for a new bus network review as the COVID pandemic lockdowns came to a close. In mid 2022, the Greater Shepparton City Council acknowledged the need to review its bus network, with the council paying for the delivery of its very own independent bus review.
This told the council what it already knew by that point – a greater bus network with more services and stops was needed to properly serve Greater Shepparton residents. Since the review came to a close in early 2023, the council has been consistently calling for the state government to begin the process of conducting its own review into the regional bus network.
“At each Budget since our review was finished, we’ve advocated for the state to conduct its own network review into Greater Shepparton,” Sali says.
“The way the process works is that we can’t get any substantial changes made to our bus services until the Victorian government conducts its own review, but unfortunately funding for the review wasn’t included in either the 2025/26 or 2026/27 state Budgets.”
The latest state Budget, unveiled by Premier Jacinta Allan’s government in early May, was headlined by an almost $100 million ‘bus bonanza’ funding package featuring expanding hours, more weekend services, new and upgraded routes in suburbs and better bus connections in regional areas. The result was a new route connecting Drysdale and Ocean Grove, an additional return trip each date on route three between Castlemaine and Harcourt and more Bass Coast Coach routes running from Cowes and Inverloch to Dandenong. There was nothing in the Budget for the northern regional expanses, including Greater Shepparton.
“What this means is every Budget cycle we go through where funding for a review isn’t included pushes us back by at least 12 to 18 months,” Sali explains.
“The best case scenario is we’re now two-and-a-half years away from getting details of a bus network review which would then need to be presented to the state government for any investments to be made into bus network alterations.”
Even if the network review was part of the 2026/27 ‘bus bonanza’, it would still be nearly 20 years since there had been a major bus network review in Greater Shepparton. It’s leaving many in the region, including Sali, frustrated by the slow moving nature of bus network change.
“We don’t expect a review to be undertaken every 12 months, but what we expect is when it’s been this long since we’ve had a significantly detailed review that would tell you loud and clear that the network is ineffective, it should happen quickly,” he says.
“We have had a bus network not delivering a public transport service to the level that it should for quite some time, and it’s only amplified when the state government announces free or half price fare measures – it’s great to listen to, but when you can’t access buses, it drives frustration.”
Sali says Greater Shepparton’s transport woes means it currently takes residents two hours to catch a bus into town from an estate where it takes, at most, 20 minutes to drive. The network also currently doesn’t have a bus running out of Mooroopna, the second major hub in Greater Shepparton alongside Shepparton itself, on weekends.
It’s not just Sali leading the fight in the region. Nationals member for Shepparton Kim O’Keeffe, a former Mayor of Greater Shepparton too, slammed the state government’s ‘bus bonanza’ Budget announcements. She says the promise of new and expanded bus services across the state only includes three related service announcements in rural and regional Victoria, all of which are in Labor-held seats.
“The minister for public and active transport Gabrielle Williams has ignored our pleas for increased public bus services,” O’Keeffe says.
“Infrastructure Victoria, in its Victoria 2025-2055 Infrastructure Strategy, recommended Shepparton as the number one area in its report last year to be provided with more public bus services, and the Greater Shepparton City Council also have this in their top ask of government priorities.
“It has been over 18 years since we have had a bus review and during that time our region has grown significantly. Local bus companies and operators are calling out for a review so they can provide the services needed.”
O’Keeffe says Shepparton is now the fifth largest regional city in Victoria, with precinct plan developments seeing up to 2,500 new homes and up to 6,000 residents arriving in the town with no adjoining public transport plan in place.
“We also have some of our surrounding towns such as Tatura, Kialla West, Shepparton East, Congupna, Tallygaroopna and Numurkah with very limited or no bus services at all,” she says.
“The free public transport measure is supposed to assist those during the cost of living crisis, but this does not help my community when there are already not enough services.”
ABC asked the Department of Transport and Planning why it hasn’t yet provided funding for a Greater Shepparton network review in the past two Budgets. A Victorian government spokesperson says the state government’s Budget delivers $77.5 million to deliver improvements to train services, including nine return services every weekday on the Shepparton Line.
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The spokesperson didn’t comment on the lack of funding for bus services or a bus network review in Greater Shepparton.
“We’re delivering public transport upgrades in regional Victoria, including more train services for Shepparton – almost doubling the number of current services,” the spokesperson told ABC.
Outside of Shepparton, a similar pattern has emerged in Melbourne’s west, with growing communities and estates not being matched by updated bus networks. This has led to community groups like Friends of the Earth and Sustainable Cities, through its Better Buses in the West campaign, consistently calling for more funding to bus networks in the western suburbs to connect to train stations and shopping centres.
“If the Melton train line is electrified in 2033, we can’t wait until 2043 for a frequent bus network,” Sustainable Cities spokesperson Adam Bain says.
“Too often, infrastructure planning and service planning are siloed apart from each other in Victoria, in contrast to international best practice.”
The Victorian government spokesperson says the nearly $100 million bus funding included providing longer operating hours and Sunday services on routes in Melbourne’s west. The likes of a new bus network for Melton South with two new routes, a new connection to Woodgrove Shopping Centre with double the frequency and more services between Moonee Ponds and Watergardens Station are all part of the latest changes, as well as longer operating hours and more Sunday services between St Albans Station and Highpoint and a more direct link between Laverton Station and Aircraft.
The spokesperson says last year the state government delivered 1,900 weekly new services on five major routes and two new routes, delivering better connections to train services at Werribee, Tarneit and Wyndham Vale stations, as well as local shopping centres.
The state government also pointed to ongoing bus network improvements being delivered in Melbourne’s west this year through last year’s $162 million state Budget investment, resulting in six new or upgraded bus services across Tarneit, Tarneit West, Rockbank, Aintree, Deanside and Mt Atkinson, to name a few.
“We’ve announced new routes and more frequent buses across Melbourne’s west as part of the upcoming Budget – building on the more than 1,900 extra weekly trips we delivered last year,” the spokesperson says.
“Jess Wilson’s Liberals don’t support cheaper public transport and have promised to cut trains to Melton and Wyndham Vale.”
Sali is hopeful Greater Shepparton can follow in the footsteps of western suburb communities by receiving some form of network upgrade after years of advocacy. He says the Greater Shepparton City Council will continue to speak regularly with the state government to make it clear a bus network review must come soon before residents permanently turn away from using public transport.
“Our issue is that we highlighted the network’s problems years ago and undertook our own review three years ago, and since then we still haven’t received Budget funding to start this process,” he says.
“We just want our people to have access to what they have a right to – reliable and flexible public transport. We need a review to turn the current outdated network upside down and rejuvenate it to match the current realities of living and working in the Greater Shepparton region.
“We’ll keep pushing, there’s a state election coming at the end of the year, so this will all feed into our advocacy and then we’ll see what happens afterwards.”
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