Commuters battle horrific congestion on 26 lane highway. More lanes?
“You just can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s one of those things — the more you build, the more people come and fill those roads up...Authorities should be careful that development and road upgrades don’t further embed reliance on private cars.”
“You can’t keep building roads forever. It needs to be a multi-modal approach of public transport, roads and active transport as a whole system solution.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-03/why-keep-spending-billions-on-motorways-m1-commute/102293384
#roads #highways #upgrades #downgrade #sprawl #commuters #WastedLifeTime #cars #crashes #PrivateVehicles #NSW #Bellingen #So50s #congestion #climatechange

Just when #Bellingen expands the 50s infrastructure road widening program without #footpaths or #bikepaths the news hits:
Private vehicle usage must be halved to cut emissions, Climate Council says
"Australia should aim to reduce transport emissions by 75 per cent by 2030
Public and active transport needs to triple to meet that goal
Eighty-one per cent of trips are made in private vehicles across Australia, but the report says that would need to drop to 36 per cent by the end of the decade.
That would mean 49 per cent of trips would have to occur on public transport and 15 per cent through active transit.
At the moment the average Australian household has two petrol cars in the garage.
One of the easier solutions would be to increase reliable #ElectricBusServices rather than working on larger infrastructure projects." Excerpt

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-22/climate-council-transport-report-more-public-active-transport/102374038
#ElectricBuses #ESharing #PrivateVehicles #Roads #HighwayToEmissionsHell #PublicTransport #FootTraffic #ActiveTransport #Transition #ClimateAction