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

Comments

• Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Absolutely criminal numbers. Considering we know that cycling infrastructure has an RoI of at least 2, while roads have an RoI less than 1, the spending on cycling infrastructure should be much higher. I’ve seen 20% as the figure that should be spent, instead of the current 0.1%.

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  • tombruzzo@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I remember seeing some numbers that every kilometre driven actually costs the EU money in terms of maintenance and the environment, whereas ever kilometre cycled was a net gain

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• Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Trucks are heavy and make modern life possible. You need thick concrete and rebar and a subsurface and a lot more besides. Trucks also leave the populated areas and need a lot of miles of that heavy duty road.

  A bicycle requires a dirt path. Maybe some asphalt if you’re feeling fancy. They barely leave the populated areas too. Few people cycle in the outback.

  The budget makes sense. Australia isn’t exactly crowded like much of Europe, you can’t just copy their models and expect the same results.

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  • Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Guessing you are not from Australia and have never been here. Thick concrete and rebar are not typically how we construct our roads. The vast majority use flexible pavement.

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The budget makes sense

    0.1% makes sense? Jesus that’s a dumb take.

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    • Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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    • Kaboom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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    • TheHolm@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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• Tau@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why are they focussing on federal funding only? I would expect federal funding to go largely to the sorts of roads which are important on a broad scale but less desirable for cycling or walking - freeways, highways, major arterial roads, and so forth. State and local government is the level I would expect to find the majority of cycling and walking investment, it seems odd that these are omitted.

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The Commonwealth funds all sorts of projects. They contributed, for example, to Brisbane City Council’s big Kangaroo Point green bridge. That bridge was one of the “five green bridges” that were a major campaign promise by the LNP in 2020. Unfortunately in part due to funding “issues” (read: prioritising roads for cars), that “five” has been watered down to “three”, two of which have been delivered as of today, and the third hasn’t even been up for community consultation on the design or alignment yet (it was, but even that process got stopped cold and will have to be restarted from scratch after the 2022 floods caused BCC to cut all cycling funding—but, again, not road funding).

    BCC should fund more of this, as you say. But they don’t. And in the face of poor investment from Councils, it would be helpful if the Commonwealth were spending more than one measly dollar per person. That Commonwealth funding, even if the project itself was delivered by state and local governments, would make it easier to get more done.

    As another example, the Commonwealth famously spends a lot on “black spot” funding. They should make it a condition of receiving black spot funding that the intersection and its approaches are upgraded with best practice safe cycling infrastructure (along with a robust definition of “best practice” that takes cues from successful designs from overseas, rather than relying on the current clearly inadequate definitions Australian road engineers use). Instead, a lot of black spot “upgrades” end up making the roads they’re on more dangerous for cyclists.

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    • Tau@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My point was that if you’re writing an article talking about how much Australians spend on cycling/walking infrastructure you should at least mention that federal numbers are not the whole picture and that federal is not the level of government that is going to cover most of said infrastructure. Omitting this smacks of the author just looking for a low number to draw attention/outrage.

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• tombruzzo@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I live 15km from work and public transport doesn’t put you anywhere near it and there are no convenient bicycle paths. One of the most direct routes requires crossing the same road like 3 times or sharing the road with a 70km speed limit.

  It could be such an easy ride but the considerations have not been put in place to make cycling a serious option for people that live nearby

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah it really sucks.

    And way too many people, in your situation, would come away saying cycling doesn’t work. Instead of blaming the bad planning. Which only increases the chance of bad planning in the future, because of a lack of support for better planning.

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    • tombruzzo@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re right. You can’t have a hodgepodge of cycling infrastructure that doesn’t lead anywhere and blame people for not using it. Cycle paths need to have planning and purpose and then you’ll see some actual uptake

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• 01011@monero.town ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Bike manufacturers and footwear apparel companies don’t pay big enough bribes.

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  • INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Let me tell you about big foot

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    • Wahots@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That actually got a chuckle out of me x3

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• rcbrk@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And how much of that “cycling infrastructure” mileage and spending is on easy yet expensive and useless examples such as along freeways, in islanded suburbs where calm backstreets should suffice, or just mystery unconnected segments?

  Does anyone know of any studies on this?

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  • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think I’d call along freeways “useless”. Easy, yes, comparatively. But I’d say it’s incredibly useful as trunk infrastructure.

    But you’re right, it’s much less useful when not part of a proper connected network. I don’t know of any studies into this, but that would be really interesting to see.

    A couple of other things that frustrate me: when there is good trunk infrastructure, but it loses priority at intersections. I’m talking the North Brisbane Bikeway at Albion Rd & McDonald Rd/McDonald Rd & Blackmore St, where the Primary Cycle Route crosses a Neighbourhood Road, but the bikeway does not run continuously across that intersection. And on the Southwestern Freeway/Centenary Freeway bikeway when it crosses Witton Rd, where it has to give way to a small secondary road, and Fig Tree Pocket Rd, where it has to give way to both the on and off ramps of the highway, rather than going under or over the main road like the Gateway cycleway always does, or simply requiring cars to give way at a wombat crossing.

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