Australian Council of Learned Academies wants public transport and city design to become priorities of Malcolm Turnbull’s government

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Building new roads is not the best way to deal with congestion in Australia’s biggest cities, an expert report has warned, amid signals that the federal government may change the focus of its infrastructure funding.

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The Delivering Sustainable Urban Mobility report was written by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (Acola), and is the eight report into securing Australia’s future.

It has issued a stark warning on funding road projects over public transport.

“The standard response to addressing urban mobility issues has been to increase road infrastructure. Unfortunately, this creates a vicious circle: more roads encourage urban sprawl, which increases the use of motorcars,” the report said. “Adding roads is not necessarily the solution for the urban mobility challenges of today.”

“Scientific consensus is that high-emissions fossil fuel dependence is not sustainable and will inevitably lead to serious social, environmental and economic problems. The Australian transport sector does not rank well on efficiency and this carries significant costs,” it said. “In Australia, rail transport has an important role to play when travelling longer distances and for certain types of freight.”

The former prime minister, Tony Abbott, eschewed using federal money for public transport projects, choosing instead to fund roads.

Commuter rail projects were the realm of state governments, he argued.

“We do not fund urban rail projects; we fund roads of national significance and we fund nationally significant freight rail projects but we don’t fund commuter rail,” he said in April.

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Malcolm Turnbull, who ousted Abbott to take the prime ministership in September, is fond of posting social media snaps of himself taking public transport. Shortly after his elevation, he declared he was “agnostic” about how infrastructure projects would be funded.

“Having safe, liveable cities that people can walk around feeling safe, people can move around freely, that is a huge economic asset. It is not just a touchy-feely thing at all,” Turnbull said.

Turnbull created the new position of ministers for cities. Jamie Briggs took on that portfolio.

“We also need to look at ways to ensure that public transport or mass transit works better in Australia,” Briggs said during a speech to launch the mobility report on Wednesday.

“Australia’s mass transit systems are very expensive to run, they’re expensive to build and very expensive to run. Early discussions with Malcolm and his team, and with some state ministers already, has indicated that this is an area that we can do some work at a really granular level to look at why it is so expensive to build and operate mass transit systems in Australia,” Briggs said.



The minister earlier told Sky News that the commonwealth should not be the only player funding major public transport projects.

“State governments and local governments, and the private sector have to have a discussion on how do we deliver these projects in a way that is financially responsible,” he said.

The Acola report said addressing urban sprawl had environmental benefits.

“Urbanisation and climate change are converging in dangerous ways. Cities cover less than 2% of the earth’s surface, but consume 78% of world energy and produce more than 60% of all carbon dioxide,” the paper said. “Both cities and their transport systems contribute to and are impacted by climate change.”

It noted that while Australian cities were routinely at the top of global “liveability” lists, they create large carbon footprints.

Fuel dependency also constitute a national security risk, the report warned.

“Australia has small and declining fuel stocks, holding no more than three weeks’ supply of oil and refined fuels onshore,” it said. “This might be regarded as a major national risk.”

Concentrating business and recreational opportunities in one part of a city has led to congestion and high house prices, creating “transport poverty” in suburban and remote regions, the report said.

“Fringe developments are characterised by low housing and low employment density, limited (if any) mixed-use development and poor access to public transport,” the report said. “Together this increases distances between where people live and where they need to travel for work, shopping, socialising and recreating. In these motorcar dependent neighbourhoods, residents are at risk of transport poverty.”

Furthermore, dependencies on cars add to obesity and other health problems, the report warned.

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The economic cost of congestion is likely to skyrocket from $13.7bn in 2011, to $53.3bn in 2031. Governments will need to pump in $350bn into infrastructure projects over the next decade in order to make up for a funding black hole created over several decades of neglect, the report said.

The report recommended that governments take a three-pronged approach to urban planning:

Reduce or avoid need to travel by creating “polycentric” cities which have more than one city centre

Shift to more environmentally-friendly modes of transport

Improve the energy efficiency of transport modes and vehicle technology

The federal government has been under pressure to tighten Australia’s fuel emissions standards, in the wake of the European Volkswagon carbon cheating scandal.

“There does come a point where you can’t simply keep putting more and more cars on the road or use trucks, which of course are mostly diesel, to deliver freight,” Australia’s chief scientist, Ian Chubb, said during the report’s launch.

“There does come a point where traffic congestion becomes so great that cities grind to a halt and pollution particles ... make residents chronically ill,” he continued. “Some experts say that we’re starting to reach that tipping point in urban mobility and urgent action is needed.”

