Electric car light on gridlocked roads horizon

The cost of road congestion will double within 15 years to $38.8 billion as cars remain the preferred mode of transport.

Electric vehicles have the potential to make up 40 per cent of the country’s fleet by 2025. Picture: Chris Russell

The cost of road congestion will double within 15 years to $38.8 billion as cars remain Australians’ preferred mode of transport.

But electric vehicles have the potential to make up 40 per cent of the country’s fleet by 2025.

The second audit of the ­nation’s infrastructure, released by Infrastructure Australia today, ­cements Sydney, Melbourne and their surrounding regions as the most congested in Australia — with costs set to soar to $15.7bn and $10.4bn in 2031 — while Canberra, Queanbeyan and greater Adelaide are the least congested.

Overall road congestion costs for 2031 ($38.8bn, up from $18.9bn in 2016) is about $14.5bn less than estimated in 2015 due to lower population projections, capacity increases to transport infrastructure networks and improvements to modelling.

The cost of public transport crowding will grow from $175 million in 2016 to $837m in 2031.

Australian passengers travelled 433 billion kilometres via transport in 2015-16, with cars accounting for 279 billion passenger kilometres (64.4 per cent), buses making up 4.99 per cent and rail at 3.73 per cent.

While cars are overwhelmingly the most popular method of travel, private vehicle use rose just 8 per cent over the past decade compared with public transport travel, which is up 24 per cent.

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Journeys to work via public transport have increased slightly from 8.99 per cent in 2011 to 9.87 per cent in 2016 and the use of public transport is highest in the four largest capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth) at 20 per cent of all commutes.

Nearly half of Australians living in outer-urban areas travelled more than 20km to work, compared with 76 per cent of inner-urban residents who lived within 10km of their workplace.

Amid calls from Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe for governments to speed up infrastructure projects, the IA report noted there had been 97 new transport projects in Sydney and 275 in Melbourne since 2015 but investments were largely playing catch-up rather than providing additional cap­acity. “Our passenger transport networks are at risk of becoming financially and environmentally unsustainable,” the report states.

“There is a lack of transparency about why and how money is spent, particularly for maintaining our existing networks. Additionally, the transport sector is the second largest emitter of Co2 in Australia (behind electricity), and emissions are growing.

“However, there are also positive developments. The transport sector is in a state of rapid transition, with advances in communications technology, electric vehicles and eventually driverless cars offering customers unprecedented mobility and access to information, as well as potentially improving the environmental and safety performance of the sector.”

Australians are increasingly choosing Uber over taxis and the report finds that “with policy support” electric vehicles, which comprise just 0.2 per cent of the existing fleet, could form 40 per cent of car sales in six years.

Under a “business-as-usual scenario” electric vehicles would make up 6 per cent of sales.

Labor set a target before the May election of 50 per cent new car sales being electric by 2030.

Electric vehicles will achieve price parity in five to 10 years as competition ramps up and range and recharging options improve.

Owners of electric vehicles spend $380 annually on maintaining them, while those who drive internal combustion engine vehicles pay $750 a year.

An average household spends $200 a week owning and operating vehicles and Australians drive the equivalent of 1000 times from Earth to the sun ever year.