Dr Paul Mees is a Senior Lecturer in Transport and Land Use Planning at the University’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. He is the author of numerous book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, and a book titled A Very Public Solution: Transport in the Dispersed City (Melbourne University Press, 2000).

Australia is almost alone among developed countries in having a national government that refuses to fund urban public transport, or non-urban passenger trains. The government does, however, generously fund urban road projects, especially freeways and tollways.

The result is a strong financial incentive for urban transport policies that favour cars and trucks at the expense of more sustainable forms of transport. These funding biases are exacerbated by the general hostility of the federal government and bureaucracy to public ownership and planning of public transport.

The results can be seen by comparing Australia’s urban and inter-city transport systems with those of Europe. Most European cities are now served by fast, frequent, clean, reliable, and above all, integrated urban and inter-urban public transport systems. By contrast, urban public transport in Australian cities provides unattractive competition to the car, while inter-city rail services are virtually non-existent.

The major challenge for transport policy makers is not specific infrastructure projects. It is, instead, the reform of governance and funding arrangements to reverse the ­policy bias that currently favours the least environmentally sustainable forms of travel, and discriminates against the environmentally friendly transport modes that should be our future.