What driving in Footscray is like
Trucks from the port
Footscray sits next to the port, and its trucks have long used local streets: almost 3,000 a day were counted on Buckley Street in 2010. Heavy stop-start traffic is one of the conditions RACV says can call for a service around every six months rather than once a year.
The train does the commute
With the busiest station outside the city on the doorstep, it's easy for a car here to go days without a proper run. RACV lists trips under 20 minutes and long spells parked among the usual reasons a battery goes flat.
Old industry, new towers
Footscray grew up as an industrial suburb, and many old factory sites are now housing since the state made it one of six Central Activities Districts in 2008. If the car lives under an apartment block, find out the building's rules on repairs before anyone comes to work on it.
The jobs that come up in Footscray
Brakes and batteries, mostly. RAC WA says brakes wear faster when they work hard, and a crawl along Buckley Street or Geelong Road works them hard, while a battery that only sees ten-minute trips struggles to stay charged.
A car that has sat for a week and only clicks needs a battery and charging test before anyone sells you a new battery. Car batteries in Melbourne covers the test, and car service in Melbourne what a routine service should include.
If it were our car
If the car mostly waits while you take the train, we'd ask for a battery test at each service and give it a half-hour run on a weekend now and then. We'd also tell the mechanic it lives on short, stop-start trips, because that changes which parts wear first.