The Free Ride’s Over

The Senate recently announced an inquiry into the productivity benefits of investing in public transport, to which the RTBU National office has provided a submission to titled ‘The Free Ride’s Over’.

Written with input from the National Institute for Economic and Industry Research, the RTBU’s submission’s key findings include:

*   In the immediate post-war decades, total transport investment stood at 70 per cent of all non- primary investment. By the 1980s this had fallen to 30 per cent and today it is less than ten per cent.

*   On an investment of $100 million in transport infrastructure, it is estimated that the impact of significant multiplier benefits would be equivalent to around a $400-$700 million increase in GDP.

*   For every $100 million governments invest in public transport assets, the return on the investment from increased revenues and reduced expenditure exceeds the cost of the investment by almost $1 billion.

*   NSW lost around $18 billion in additional income, Victoria almost $20 billion and Australia $48 billion as a result of lost productivity stemming from a failure to maintain the 1980 expenditure levels on public transport

You can see the full submission here.

The terms of reference for the inquiry can be found here: