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City in Victoria, Australia
Melbourne (Kulin: Birrarunga, which means "place next to the Yarra River" (listen) MEL bərn) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria and the second most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Its name refers to an urban agglomeration of 9993 km2 (3858 sq mi), including a metropolitan area of 31 municipalities, and is also the common name for the center. The city occupies a large part of the coast of Port Phillip Bay (Kulin: Naarm) and spread inland to Dandenong and Macedon Ranges, the Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley. It has a population of 5 million (19% of the population in Australia), and its inhabitants are called "Melburnians" .Home to Aborigines for over 40,000 years, earned the Melbourne area as a popular meeting place for local Kulin Nation clans. A short-lived penal settlement was established at Port Phillip, then part of the British colony of New South Wales, in 1803, but it was not until 1835, with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) that Melbourne was formed. It was established as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named Melbourne by Governor General Richard Bourke April 10, 1837 in honor of the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. In the wake of 1850's Victorian gold rush, the city into a long economic boom through the late 1880s, had turned it into one of the world's largest and richest cities. After the federation of Australia in 1901, served as the temporary seat of government of the new nation until Canberra became the permanent capital in 1927. Today it is a leading financial center in the Asia-Pacific region and ranks 15th in the Global Financial Centers Index.Melbourne is home to many of Australia's most famous landmarks, such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, National Gallery of Victoria and the world heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building. Known for its cultural heritage, the city gave rise to Australian Rules Football, Australian impressionism and Australian cinema, and has recently been recognized as a UNESCO City of Literature and a global center for street art, live music and theater. It hosts major annual international events, such as the Australian Grand Prix and the Australian Open, and also hosted the Olympics in 1956 summer and the Commonwealth Games in 2006. Melbourne consistently ranked as the world's most liveable city for much of the 2010s.The largest airport serving the city is Melbourne (also known as Tullamarine Airport), which is the second busiest in Australia and Australia's busiest port port Melbourne. Its main metropolitan rail terminal is Flinders Street station and its main regional road and rail coach terminal's Southern Cross Station. It also has the most extensive highway network in Australia and the largest urban tram network in the world. .... Learn more at Wikipedia
Like many Australian cities, Melbourne has a high dependence on car transport, in particular in the outer suburban areas where the largest number of cars purchased, with a total of 3.6 million private vehicles using the 22,320 km (13,870 mi) of road, and one of the highest lengths of road per capita in the world. The early 20th century saw a rise in popularity of cars, resulting in large-scale suburban expansion and a tendency for the development of urban sprawl. In the mid-1950s, there were just under 200 cars per 1,000 people, and in 2013 there were 600 cars per 1,000 people. Today, an extensive network of highways and arterial roads used by private vehicles including freight and public transport including buses and taxis. Major highways feeding into the city include the Eastern Freeway, Monash Freeway and West Gate Freeway (which extends over large West Gate Bridge), whereas other highways sailing town or lead to other major cities, including CityLink (which spans the large Bolte Bridge), Eastlink, the Western Ring Road, Calder Freeway, Tullamarine Freeway (main airport link) and the Hume Freeway which links Melbourne and Sydney.Melbourne have an integrated transport public based on extensive train, tram, bus and taxi systems. Flinders Street Station was the world's busiest passenger station in 1927 and Melbourne tram network managed to Sydney to become the world's largest in the 1940s. Since the 1940s, public transport use in Melbourne declined due to a rapid expansion of the road and motorway network, with the largest declines in the tram and bus use. This decline accelerated in the early 1990s due to large cuts public services. Operations in Melbourne public transport was privatized in 1999 through a franchise model with operational responsibility for train, tram and bus network licensed to private companies. After 1996 there was a rapid increase in public transport patronage due to increased employment in central Melbourne, fashion percentage of commuters increased to 14.8% and 8.4% of all trips. A target of 20% public transport mode share for Melbourne 2020 was approved by the state government in 2006. Since 2006, public transport patronage has increased by over 20%. Melbourne rail network dates back to the 1850s gold rush era, and today consists of 218 sampling stations on 16 lines radiating from the City Loop, a mostly-underground metro systems around the CBD. Flinders Street Station, Australia's busiest rail hub, serving the entire network and remains a prominent Melbourne landmark and meeting place. The city has rail connections with regional Victorian cities, as well as direct interstate rail traffic that deviates from Melbourne second major railway Terminus, Southern Cross Station, Docklands. The Overland Adelaide depart twice a week, while the XPT to Sydney departs twice daily. During fiscal year 2017-2018, recorded Rail Melbourne 240.9 million passenger trips, the highest number of passengers in its history. Many rail lines, along with dedicated lines and rail yards, is also used for shipping. Melbourne's tram network is from the 1880s land boom, and from 2019, consists of 250 kilometers (155.3 mi) of double track, 475 trams, 25 routes and 1,763 tram stops, making it the largest in the world. During 2017-2018 was 206.3 million passenger trips made by tram. About 75 per cent of Melbourne's tram network share road space with other vehicles, while the rest of the network is separated or light rail. Melbourne's trams are recognized as iconic cultural and tourist attraction. Heritage trams operate on the free City Circle route, intended for visitors to Melbourne and heritage restaurant trams travel through the city and surrounding areas during the evening. Melbourne is currently 50 new E Class trams with some already in operation 2014. E Class trams is approximately 30 meters long and are superior C2 class tram of the same length. Melbourne's bus network consists of almost 300 routes which mainly service the outer suburbs and fill gaps in the network between rail and tram services. 127600000 passenger journeys recorded on Melbourne buses 2013 to 2014, an increase of 10.2 percent year year.Ship transport an important component in Melbourne transport. The Port of Melbourne is Australia's largest container and general cargo port and also its busiest. The port handled two million containers in a 12-month period in 2007, making it one of the five ports in the Southern Hemisphere. Station Pier in Port Phillip Bay is the largest passenger terminal with cruise ships and Spirit of Tasmania ferries which cross Bass Strait to Tasmania docking there. Ferries and water taxis run from berths along the Yarra River as far upstream as South Yarra and Port Phillip Bay. Melbourne has four airports. Melbourne Airport in Tullamarine is the city's main international and domestic gateway and second busiest in Australia. The airport is home base for passenger airlines Jetstar Airways and Tiger Airways Australia and cargo airlines Australian air Express and Toll Priority; and is a major hub for Qantas and Virgin Australia. Avalon Airport, located between Melbourne and Geelong, is a secondary hub of Tiger. It is also used as a freight and maintenance facility. Buses and taxis are the only form of public transport to and from the city's main airports. Air Ambulance facilities are available for domestic and international transport of patients. Melbourne also has a significant general aviation airport Moorabbin Airport in the city's southeastern which also handles a small number of passenger flights. Essendon Airport, which was once the city's main airport also handles passenger flights, general aviation and some cargo flights.The city also has a shared bicycle system that was founded in 2010 and uses a network of marked lanes and segregated cycle facilities.
| Name | Melbourne |
|---|---|
| Long Name | Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
| Region | Victoria |
| Country | Australia |
| Map | Open Map |
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