Bendigo's transport future: What the officials, engineers and community voices are actually saying

The State Government's 2026-27 infrastructure budget allocated $2.3 billion to regional Victoria, but transport advocates in Bendigo say the city's share remains disappointingly thin. With the Calder Highway corridor carrying more than 14,000 vehicles daily between the Bendigo ring road and Ravenswood, engineers and local councillors are pressing Canberra and Spring Street hard for a funding commitment before the next federal funding cycle closes in December.

The timing matters. Bendigo is midway through a decade-long population surge, the city crossed 120,000 residents in the 2021 census and demographers at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus project that figure will hit 140,000 by 2036. That growth is straining road, rail and active-transport infrastructure that was largely designed for a city half that size. Bendigo Health's $630 million capital expansion at Lumsden Street is drawing hundreds of construction workers and, eventually, an enlarged permanent workforce to the city's inner north, a precinct where bus frequency and cycling infrastructure remain patchy at best.

City of Greater Bendigo transport planners have pointed to three corridors as highest priority: the Midland Highway through Kangaroo Flat, the Eaglehawk Road bus corridor connecting the northern suburbs to the CBD, and the Bendigo Station precinct, where a long-discussed redevelopment of the Pall Mall end of the rail interface has been sitting in feasibility stages since 2022. V/Line recorded more than 1.8 million boardings on the Bendigo line in the 2024-25 financial year, its highest figure since before the pandemic. Platform capacity and the condition of the Station's Kiss-and-Ride zone are now cited regularly in passenger feedback surveys as the top two irritants for commuters.

Engineers and advocates pushing for a timeline

Engineers Australia's Victorian regional chapter has submitted a formal briefing to the Department of Transport and Planning arguing that the Eaglehawk Road corridor upgrade, estimated at roughly $45 million for a dedicated bus lane from McIvor Road to the Hargreaves Mall interchange, would deliver a benefit-cost ratio above 2.8, well above the federal threshold for infrastructure co-funding. The briefing, dated May 2026, also flags that the current 30-minute headway on Route 2 buses means workers at the Bendigo Health campus arriving for early morning shifts have no viable public transport option before 7 a.m. The Bendigo Sustainability Group has been making the same argument to councillors since at least 2023.

The Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation has separately raised concerns about proposed road-widening work on the Midland Highway near Maiden Gully, flagging the potential for heritage survey obligations under Victoria's Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 to delay any works that break ground without proper cultural heritage management plans in place. That adds another layer of complexity, and cost, to what the State Government had flagged as a relatively straightforward duplication project.

What the next six months look like

City of Greater Bendigo is expected to table its updated Integrated Transport Strategy at the August council meeting, a document originally scheduled for release in late 2025 before being pushed back twice. Council officers say the strategy will include a prioritised infrastructure list tied to specific funding asks directed at both the Allan Government and the federal infrastructure pipeline. The Bendigo Business Council has signalled it will back a joint submission with the council.

For commuters, the most immediate practical change is the Route 2 timetable review that Public Transport Victoria confirmed in June would be finalised before the end of the September quarter. If approved, revised timetables could be running by late November. The Bendigo Station precinct feasibility study, meanwhile, is due to report to the Department of Transport and Planning by 31 October, after which a decision on whether to proceed to detailed design is expected within 90 days. Transport advocates say that 90-day window, running into early 2027, is when the lobbying pressure needs to be highest.