Lonie Report

The Victorian Transport Study, better known as the Lonie Report, was an extensive study of freight and passenger transport within the state of Victoria, in Australia. The study was set up on 13 June 1979 by the Parliament of Victoria, and the report was published on 26 September 1980.

Murray Lonie, a retired executive of General Motors and BHP, was appointed to head the study and the secretary was the head of the Country Roads Board, Robin Underwood.

In the words of the authors the Lonie Report aimed to:

institute a study into all freight and passenger transport within Victoria, and to and from Victoria, in order to produce a co-ordinated transport system capable of meeting the needs of all residents of Victoria, having particular regard to the effect of transport on the balanced development of the State.

To some extent, the Lonie Report followed on from the Bland Report, a 1972 inquiry into land transport in Victoria by Sir Henry Bland, but was extended to cover a much greater number of topics, including, but not limited to, ports and air transportation. There were special sections for the transport of certain important commodities, including cement and grain.

Between June and December 1979, 41 individuals, 21 government agencies and 28 of the (then) 211 Victorian local government areas wrote submissions to the study, as did a large number of lobby groups representing various positions on the question of transport planning.

The writing of the report was done between December 1979 until its final publication in September 1980. It was presented to Transport Minister Rob Maclellan, and was released as a total of twenty-five volumes and a final report, containing recommendations on every topic covered.

The Lonie Report argued that, despite the immense change in demand for various modes of transportation since the beginning of the twentieth century, the transport system was still run by the same methods as prevailed in the nineteenth century. It argued for large-scale deregulation of transport markets, especially by the removal of the current restrictions on the carriage by road of such goods as cement, sawn timber, fertilisers and grain.

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