Barriers to Sustainable Transport in Australia

Abstract

Popular imagery often celebrates Australia as a paradise of sweeping deserts and pastoral plains, ringed with unsullied golden beaches. The image is a deeply misleading one for two principal reasons. First, Australia, the nation, is a thoroughly urban society whose peoples have largely abandoned rural and outback living for city life. Two thirds of Australians live in the nation’s eight largest cities and nearly 4 in 10 citizens live in Sydney and Melbourne alone. The suburban bungalow and the private motor car, not the distant farm and the long journeying train, are the principal features of Australian life.