Couldn't agree more with the author on the need for properly planned infrastructure that serves society.

Examples here in Melbourne are the constant demands from the public and planners for rail links to Doncaster (north east of the city) and the airport. Oh no too expensive or not enough demand claim the pollies. But they can find the money for a freeway across the city that will attract monopoly rents (tolls) for a private company to help trucks in/out of a wrongly located docks area.

I look at our current pollies and their senior bureaucrats and I doubt it would be possible to implement successful infrastructure like Sydney Harbour Bridge, Snowy Mountains scheme, Ord River.

As for something as innovative as Dr Bradfield! I can see the dust already rising as the watermelons brains heat up at the thought that anyone would dare to suggest such a thing. Build a dam! Get real.

DKit

Lets see, the road pays for itself whereas we, and we it is as most wont use it, should pay for a toy rail line for a 1%. No way, pay for yourself and keep your hands our of our pckets.

Well McCackie if that's your attitude to public transport then you'd better stop ALL buses and trains immediately. They all run at a cash loss. Oh and all your roads will become toll roads. Can't have some lousy freerider using your road without paying for it.

DKit

Just the teensiest bit of special pleading here, methinks.

Many of these are good suggestions, of course. And in the spirit of fairness to all, may I suggest that the billions of dollars secreted away in the oldies' super funds be pointed in the direction of Mr Compton's proposals? On a personal basis, of course, i.e. the superannuant voluntarily invests their funds into vehicles specifically established to build such facilities?

Kinda like the way building societies were first set up; you put money into a pot, accommodation gets built, and you then live in what you have designed and asked for.

In that way, we will find out whether the folk referred to in the article actually want to do something about it, or are happy just to grumble that "someone ought to do something".

After all, these are the folk who have benefitted most from Australia's prosperity during the baby-boomer days. They have received all the tax breaks associated with investing in Super, and are by far and away in the best position to fund themselves, instead of extracting even more from the economy that they will be leaving to the next generation.

Fine aspirations Everald.

But…

How can we talk about infrastructure without talking about population growth??

It is just nonsensical.

If we want better transport infrastructure and the alleviation of our terrible congestion problems in the big cities, then we need to very carefully consider the rate of population growth and the future size of the population in these places, and for the whole country.

We fundamentally need to note that the demand for new infrastructure is huge and the pressure on existing infrastructure continues to increase, and that even the most enormous effort put into building more infrastructure and improving the existing stuff will at best simply maintain the same overall standard for ever-more people!

This seems to be the huge hole in your reasoning, Everald, and in that of your think tank; Per Capita: http://www.percapita.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=64

We’ve have surely got to very carefully consider the demand for infrastructure and what we can do to slow or stabilise it, rather than thinking entirely on the supply side.

It has surely got to be all about balancing demand and supply, rather than about struggling to improve the supply in the face of an unaddressed ever-rapidly-increasing demand.

Have to agree with most of this Everald.
Today, cars, trucks and buses, rely almost exclusively, on foreign fuel. And then sometimes sit for hours on clogged roadways, burning it!
This grid lock costs billions in lost productivity, whereas, a very rapid rail system that move commuters, would not only get them to their work stations or appointments quicker, but consume only locally sourced fuel while they travel.
My preferred system is the world's fastest, whisper quiet magnetron, constructed in continuous loops, via a single one way only circuits, that eliminated the possibility of collisions; meaning, modules could be dispatched as they filled, rather than waiting for a whole train to fill.
I promise you, this would be the most popular and profitable public transport system in the world, as people will always pay a premium, for very rapid, extremely safe service.
We could connect that with a monorail service, that ran round their own never ending circuits, and despatched modules as soon as they were fill; meaning, demand would control the frequency of the service, which would always run at a profit.
The thing that kills urban rail, light rail and trams, is the number of empty seats, and the enormous amount of fuel that must be burned, just to run half/nearly empty trains etc. And the mono rail service could connect with well planned moving walkways, that only ran, with a profit earning payload, roughly equal to half the payload of a monorail module? (Two or three people?)
The only limits on our technological and social progress, are those we actively impose on ourselves; particularly, by those experts, who know absolutely all the myriad reasons, why something can't be done!
Rhrosty.