The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Sydney transport 'needs $1b a year'

Sydney transport 'needs $1b a year'

Posted by Phil Hart on March 17, 2009 - 7:21am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: public transportation [list all tags]

No time for a complete Bullroarer, but this piece of research from Garry Glazebrook at UTS in Sydney deserves coverage:

Sydney transport 'needs $1b a year'

A study by the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has found Sydneysiders and the NSW Government spent more than $40 billion on cars in 2006, making them by far the most expensive form of transport in the city.

Almost $23 billion was spent on fuel, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, tolls and parking in 2006.

The city's motorists generated a further $18.1 billion in "externality costs" such as congestion, pollution, accidents and subsidies for roads and parking.

Garry Glazebrook, author of the report on the study, published in the Urban Policy and Research Journal, said the NSW Government spent just $3 billion a year on public transport each year.

"We're actually spending, in cold hard cash terms, $23 billion per year, plus we're producing all these other externalities," he said.

"If we switch out of the $23 billion and we switch $1 billion of that out of cars and into public transport, then within 30 years we would have a world-class public transport system."

...

A congestion tax, such as the recently introduced time-of-day tolling on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, could be effective if it was introduced in combination with building better transport alternatives, Dr Glazebrook said.

The cities of London, Singapore and Stockholm had successfully introduced congestion charges and encouraged people to switch to public transport.

"In the long term, it's actually going to save us money as well as reducing environmental impacts," he said.