this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Every year, Australia spends $714 per person on roads. Just 90 cents goes to walking, wheeling and cycling. (theconversation.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Makes sense. I've lived in three Australian cities and getting around on bike, bus, and rail is much easier than driving. Plenty of friends I met never even got a driver's licence.

But as you get away from a city centre, things become challenging. By the time you've left a city region, you enter the Australian sprawl of nasty climate and nothingness between bits and pieces of civilisation peppered around the national map.

It's a land where one state would be the ~~16th largest country~~ (I forgot about WA) 10th largest country in the world. A place where I almost all cities, you can fit several European nations in between your's and the next closest.

It's car use and costs on roads reflects its low population having a density per square kilometre comparable to the scarcist places on the planet. But if you are in a city—at least those I was in—the infrastructure for not having a car is great. You're really punished for driving a vehicle in one, yet many still do and are miserable every morning and afternoon.

[–] gitgud@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago

I mean, it might also just be cheaper to maintain roads for walking, wheeling, and cycling too. They undergo less stress and pressure, even at much higher usage.

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Feels like trains between cities would be way cheaper.

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're definitely used, but there's a massive mountain range in the way down the entire East and South coast. And it ain't subtle either. You're at sea level, then suddenly climbing very steep.

It's called The Great Dividing Range because that's what it does.

But if you're not needing a vehicle to get around, just going city to city on the same side of the ranges, train is good. High speed rail would be excellent. Australia is a perfect candidate for it since so many kilometres need to be eaten up getting between places and where it's flat, it's real flat

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Famously, trains cannot cross mountain ranges. Only cars can do that.

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The article is talking about on-costs to the national economy, not what is achievable in physics or not. Same concept of the fuel expenditure in space programs exiting the atmosphere.

Desoite it's reputation, Australia's geography makes its flora, ecosystems, and fauna very fragile.

Overcoming a mountain range four times the size of Great Britain for a population density that's 1.3% of just one Great Britain doesn't make financial or, in Australia's case, environmental sense. They're still trying to fix up the mistakes they made to the environment during colonialism, plus the modern globalisation ones.

Energy for recommending train solutions is more efficiently directed to countless other places. Else we may as well be mentioning Liberians could just get a Costcobto solve their issues.

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago

countless other places

Like cars. Famously energy efficient cars.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And thats just the cost of roads. Not tax grants and funding going to car companies, not the many billions of dollars in healthcare costs related to issues stemming from cars, not the social and mental health impacts of car dependency, etc.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 7 points 1 week ago

And then there's parking...

[–] biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

I live close to Melbourne and our walking and cycling infrastructure in the suburbs I'm closest to, and inside the city aswell, is pretty high quality, but is a bit spotty in areas (although such areas are generally less maintained anyway, so it also includes the roads).

If it's only 90¢, then that's an amazing deal.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Motorists pay registration fees and taxes on fuel which goes to pay for infra and maint.

Pedestrians walk for free.

Not defending cars, but if you're a pedestrian, then you're basically pirating pavement and I'm down for that.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah but thats not the total cost is it ?They kill 30 a day from transport pollution, vehicular homicide is thousands a year, several more thousand are hospitalised. They health coat alone are enormous and they get away with that for "free", where as walking leads to lpwer heathcare costa, lower ,.lower raod debays, lower pollution death and better mental health outcomes.

If you own a car and cycle you're not getting a reduction, so many cyclists have opportunity costs of insurance and rego for a vehicle they don't use as much.

Car Infrastructure costs are more then rego and fuel excise, ao while they pay aomethig they are still subsidised..

Then we have the whole climate change thing, a tonne of emissions coats about $1200 to remove, that's not costed in. The enviormental damge from urban sprawl enabaled by cars isnt costed in, whats the habitiat of a Quoll worth exactly ?

And 100 other costs car drivers dont pay, like tyre and brake dust destroying marine and riparian environments.

We should be paying people to cycle and making car travel near impossible outside of edge cases.

[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Where i live, municipal roads are maintained by the city. Funded by property taxes.

The vast majority of fuel taxes are collected by the federal gov't and provinces. There is nothing that goes directly to fund roads. This is such a fundamental piece of misinformation by drivers in canada.

Anyway, back to the point about city roads (everything other than highways).

I contribute the same amount to road maintenance as my neighbor. I have no car. Neighbor has a giant SUV that makes a ton of wear and tear on the roads, and contributes to city gridlock.

Do drivers think the $50 they pay for street parking permit comes even CLOSE to the value of the real estate they take up 24/7?

Who do you think is subsidizing who here? I walk and bike "for free"... And drivers frame it as us who are freeloaders?

Despite your support for pedestrians, framing them as getting shit for free is inaccurate (at least in canada. I know the article is about AUS)

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Is pretty similar in Australia. Registration isn't a road use fee, it's a deadly weapon use fee, a large part of which is compulsory third party insurance, but the average driver thinks they're 'paying their way' with it. It's also a state fee, while most of the roads we drive on day to day are built and maintained by local councils, which everyone pays for via property rates regardless of choice of transport.

We're also grappling with the increasing popularity of electric vehicles and the loss of fuel excise revenue from that, and how to recoup that from ev owners, which they don't like.

Even so, car driving is still the most heavily subsidised form of transport around.