Road Transport costs and the fiscal burden on the states and Commonwealth are not only high but also continuously rising. The expansion of road transport facilities intensifies traffic congestion. The basic reason is that motor vehicle use is subsidized and thus the growth of the freeway and highway system leads to an increase in the demand for their use which increase private debt levels. Locally sourced production that saves money on transportation costs is what is needed to contribute to the revival of manufacturing and Constrain Chinese import model. Being near your market will be more important in the 21st century cut the growth in private debt levels

What is urgently needed is more public transport and active transport, to end subsidites to car commuters and increased tariffs on imported cars and turning Australian car production around to electric cars and petrol electric hybrids

This is simple economics. You subsidize something, people use more of it. Few who use the roads pay the full cost of their use — especially when you consider the costs of things such as urban pollution, depletion of oil reserves, global warming and focusing on road maintenance. Indeed, some parts of the road system are at breaking point now. The road foundation is so bad in parts that just laying new asphalt won’t work as the surface doesn’t last. As the surface gets rough, traffic slows and backups begin.

In the forseable future Australians will spend more time idling away in traffic. Congestion will continue to raise the cost of transporting goods. Costs to use this network will just go up and up. Thinking of it in this way, it signals a crisis for an old order and perhaps the birth of something new.

The old order — namely corporate giants — benefitted tremendously from subsidized roads. What Coles and the big distributers is to send its cheap, China-imported crap across the country’s subsidized road networks? In fact, just about any big business that depends on roads as part of a competitive cost advantage will find tougher competition for the forseable future