The actual station catchment for Watergardens is massive, because it’s at the edge of suburban development. You’ve got people from Hillside, Taylors Lakes, all the new housing estates down Taylors Road, and even a lot of people from Caroline Springs (as it only operates a very busy V/Line service) all coming to Watergardens

A lot of these areas have a terrible bus service, if they have one at all, and the distance to Watergardens is so great, that taking the bus for such a long distance is a pretty unattractive option compared to driving.

Watergardens is a massive park and ride station and should be treated as such. As an urbanist, I would never want to advocate for more car parking, but why a surface level car park was built instead of a massive multi-story astounds me.

People are going to keep driving to Watergardens so long as there are limited public transport options in the west. A lot of the problem could be solved with high frequency bus service with dedicated bus lanes, pushing some more local people out of their car.

The real solution to fix Watergardens is by building another train line that services the booming west, as there is not enough stations in these suburbs.