Oz transport options are some of the more complex dilemmas facing the Australian government when it comes to urban planning. This is because Australia – along with countries like the United States and Canada – has a huge land area along with a very low population density. The problem of transport then becomes clear due to the lack of public transport.
Business and Transport
Australia has the world’s largest per capita road allocation as well as the highest per capita fuel consumption. For logistical reasons, this means that businesses have to depend excessively on road transport for freight thereby increasing costs and being unable to make use of large scale infrastructure. Private freight is commonly carried via road.
Perhaps the most telling sign of Oz transport options difficulties is the slow growth of Australia’s exports compared to the rest of the world. It’s not that there’s nothing to export – quite the contrary. Nor is there a problem with getting goods off the continent – Australia’s shipping system is most capable.
Australia’s main exports include coal, iron ore, gold, natural gas, crude petroleum to places like China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Much of these exports take place by ship. The problem arises while transferring goods like coal onto the delivery systems and it’s here that the bottleneck manifests itself.
Oz Transport and Imports
Being an island, albeit a very large island, imports are mainly brought in via ships. Once arrived, crude and refined petroleum, passenger motor vehicles, and medications from countries such as China, US, Japan, and Thailand need to be distributed. With road transport being unable to fully provide goods at a speedy enough rate, the railway system is also insufficient. And it’s this poor infrastructure that Oz transport is finding it difficult to cope with.
Yet, when Australians put their minds to it, they can come up with some state-of-the-art forms of transport.
Oz Public Transport
For example, in South Australia, Adelaide introduced the very first solar-powered electric bus that is recharged using 100% solar energy. This bus is known as the Tindo.
Tindo Bus in Adelaide
The Tindo bus is very quiet, and produces no emissions. Oz transport can’t get any greener than this. And to encourage people to stay out of their cars, the Adelaide City Council provides a free bus service available to anyone who wishes to use it. The Council has obviously used foresight by allowing free public transport to places such as shopping precincts, hospitals, libraries – in other words the places people want to visit. And naturally one of the buses in use is the Tindo.
The Tindo bus gets its batteries recharged using the electricity generated from the solar PV system on the Adelaide City bus station’s roof, and really is carbon neutral. A further big plus for the Tindo bus is that it uses a regenerative braking system, saving up to 30 percent energy consumption.
The Adelaide O-Bahn
Adelaide boasts the longest guided busway in the world, covering a length of 12 kilometres, and is named the Adelaide O-Bahn. Buses travel at up to 100 kms per hour on the tracks. It is considered a very safe form of transport, apart from the rare occurrence of a car that tries to drive down it and has to be removed. Buses are designed to travel on ordinary roads and then to switch to the O-Bahn.
The fact that the O-Bahn is used by over 7 million passengers a year is evidence of how popular this transport system is.
The South Australian 2011 budget has earmarked more money to the O-Bahn, as upgrades costing $17.1 million will be carried out over the next two years on interchanges along the corridor.
Let us not forget another form of transport which is also green – the bicycle! Backed by all governments, Australia has a national cycling strategy which is intended to promote more cycling, and to double the number of cyclists on Oz roads by 2016.
Bicycles now in fact outsell cars. If more people rode a cycle and cut down car use think of the health benefits to us and other road users that would bring.
There are financial benefits also to using a bicycle rather than running a car. Research shows that it costs around $1,000 per year to own and maintain a good cycle, which includes the initial purchase and maintenance. To run even the most cost-effective medium-sized car costs $10,623 a year, including on-road costs, registration, insurance, fuel, licensing and depreciation. What can be done with the difference of more than $9,000 per year? The money could be used to live a little more comfortably, or it could be saved. Calculations have shown that by replacing a car with a bike and investing the difference, someone aged 25 would have more than $2 million in cash by retirement age, after making regular monthly deposits at six per cent compound interest. Or of course there’s the best of both worlds. Spend some and save the rest.
