Melbourne School Route Stress Map

Prototype, not a legal access or routing map. Catchments group the Victorian Government's integrated Year 7 neighbourhood school zones for 2026 by parent school. Where one school has multiple junior-campus catchments, the selected area is their union; specialist, single-sex and standalone senior alternatives can overlap these catchments and are not shown in this clean partition. Street colours use the experimental VicBUG Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress model: LTS 1 is very low stress and LTS 4 is high stress. Roads, designated cycleways and supported shared paths are shown; ordinary or uncertain pedestrian trails are excluded. The map shows the more stressful permitted cycling direction; dashed scores have low classification confidence. Crossing dots use the crossing's own LTS and the same subdued opacity as the street network. The optional C1 and C2 Strategic Cycling Corridor layer shows the Victorian Government's strategic network designation; it does not by itself mean protected or low-stress infrastructure exists. For every approved standard Vicmap address inside the 2021 Census dwelling-Mesh-Block footprint, the route model looks up the official catchment and audited campus separately for Years 7–12. Estimated year cohorts sharing a campus are combined; nearby same-street addresses with the same six-year progression are consolidated before routing. Every journey compares a distance-only plausible route with a low-stress candidate. The low-stress route is retained when it reduces LTS 3–4 exposure and is no more than 8% longer, capped at 200 m, or when at least 250 m of LTS 1–2 runs within 30 m of the direct LTS 3–4 corridor and its bounded access detour remains proportionate. LTS 2 is therefore a practical but tightly bounded alternative, while a genuinely parallel LTS 1–2 facility can also win: an unrelated indirect low-stress route does not win merely because it is safer. Mapped sidewalks and low-confidence inferred local-road footpaths keep stressful direct routes plausible. The underlying road and crossing LTS remains unchanged, and route geometry stays on bicycle-accessible road or path links. This represents potential footpath riding and is not a lawful or recommended route. Critical barriers are recurring LTS 3–4 links and crossings. Purple shows busy acceptable-but-improvable LTS 2 street corridors. Adjacent same-street graph edges carrying at least 250 weighted two-way student-route exposures are merged, and only continuous runs of at least 75 m are displayed. Corridor exposure is averaged by edge length so tiny routing fragments cannot inflate the result. LTS 2 improvement crossing dots are intentionally hidden to reduce clutter. This is a route-reach proxy, not a construction-cost estimate. Both priority layers show potential exposure, not observed trips, exact homes or enrolments. Selecting a school loads its grouped catchment, every audited Years 7–12 destination, route priorities and detailed tree archives for overlapping councils. Route priorities remain visible when a later-year campus or the route to it lies beyond the selected catchment. Census shading shows every retained SA1 neighbourhood using the density of usual residents aged 12–17, from pale at lower density to dark orange-red at higher density. Shading is clipped to 2021 ABS Mesh Blocks that recorded at least one dwelling, less mapped open space, golf and water; counts and density still belong to the whole SA1 and are not school enrolments or household locations. Road trauma shows recorded under-18 pedestrian and bicycle casualty sites from 2016–2025; broader zooms use a heatmap.