Comment on Australia spends $714 per person on roads every year – but just 90 cents goes to walking, wheeling and cycling

• Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  How much do you think a road costs versus a bike path? If anything, bike paths are over funded.

  Have you ever looked into what goes into a road? And what goes into a bike path/sidewalk?

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Have you ever looked into what goes into a road? And what goes into a bike path/sidewalk?

    Have you? I’ve seen wide ranging figures around the world, but Australian data says every dollar spent on bike paths returns $5 to the economy. Meanwhile, money spent on roads costs the economy, returning less than $1 per dollar spent.

    Nobody is saying we shouldn’t have roads, but the amount spent on them is obscene, considering the opportunity cost.

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• Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Actually I decided to look it up. It’s about $2.5 million per mile for a basic 2-lane asphalt road. welovepaving.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-pave-on….

  That number can get much higher very quickly if you use concrete, have more lanes, need bridges or tunnels, and whatever else comes up.

  A mile of 4 ft wide concrete sidewalk is about $182,265.6

  www.lawnstarter.com/…/concrete-sidewalk-price/

  And very few are walking/bicycling from Perth to Brisbane, but there’s still trucks going in between which depend on the road network.

  More money per mile and more miles means it costs more.

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    But what you’re neglecting there is the fact that our road network is already complete. Aside from new developments, all it needs is maintenance. Our bike network is woeful. There are almost no trips that can be taken entirely on separated bikeways. There are hundreds of kilometres of bikeways needed in Brisbane alone before we could be considered to have even a moderately successful bike network.

    And, again, this is positive ROI.

    Also: we have too much of a reliance on trucks as it is. Any inter-city road that gets more than half a dozen road trains per day should probably have actual trains to take that freight far more efficiently. Ditto roads seeing the equivalent of that in regular semis. But that’s a conversation for another thread.

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    • Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Y’all apparently pave it with asphalt, which has sky high maintenance costs compared to concrete + rebar. That would be something I consider to be the actual issue, especially when you run super heavy truck trains like y’all do. If I was in charge of your road network, which I’m not, I’d start paving your big roads properly. But that’s neither here nor there.

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      • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Wait, where are you that they make roads out of concrete? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

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  • DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    What are these miles and ft you speak of ?

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    • Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Sorry, 1.69 (nice) Kilometers and .305 Meters, or roughly 1/2 of a Futball/Soccer Ball

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      • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Sorry we’re not big on soccer here. Got that in football lengths? (I’ll accept either Aussie Rules or rugby footballs.)

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• TheHolm@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It just reflect usefulness of each applications. You needs trucks but bicycle is just a hobby. Walking just do not need much infra at all.

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  • Nottalottapies@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Where do you get the ridiculous assertion that a bicycle is just a hobby? Plenty of people cycle to work, shops, visit friends etc. I am one of them.

    Brisbane City Council openly publishes counts of cycle paths around Brisbane. There are literally thousands of people using these on weekdays to commute.

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You needs trucks but bicycle is just a hobby

    bullshit

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