The two NSW motorway projects were unable to consider the issue of access to a mix of transport options, which is a key factor in public health impacts.
Dylan Passmore/flickr
Transport infrastructure projects are conceived, planned and assessed in a way that makes it difficult to properly consider their major public health impacts.
Sydney’s WestConnex road project has a surprisingly low ‘worst case’ cost estimate.
David Moir/AAP
Projects like Sydney’s WestConnex and Melbourne’s Western Distributor don’t account for real world evidence of driver behaviour in estimating travel time savings.
By persuading some drivers to travel a different route or at a different time, congestion charges can dramatically improve the flow of traffic.
AAP/Andrew Brownbill
Bigger cities increase wages, output and innovation, but also problems of congestion and pollution. Congestion charges can minimise these problems by dramatically improving traffic flows.
Major development banks are funding logging, mining and infrastructure projects that are having enormous impacts on nature. Here, forests are being razed along a newly constructed road in central Amazonia.
William Laurance
Big new investors such as the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank are key players in a worldwide infrastructure, and that could be bad news for the environment.
The politicisation of road funding decisions can make for wasteful spending.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Crews patch them, just to see these recurrent potholes come back again. New research focuses on microwaves zapping patches to make a more permanent pothole fix.
New data have revealed a disturbing trend in forest loss: the hearts of the world’s forests are disappearing. To stop them bleeding out, we’ll have to say ‘no’ to some developments.
According to all the data, urban car use has peaked, but official traffic modelling forecasts a remarkable reversal.
AAP/Julian Smith
On average, people won’t accept a commuting time of more than an hour. As cities grow ever bigger, new road projects can’t achieve this, yet policymakers still rely on modelling that defies evidence.
Might the sun set on this technology before it’s even taken off?
129664508@N08/flickr
Once a new road opens, people switch back to cars and congestion increases back to a steady-state point of gridlock. For lasting effectiveness, policy needs to include congestion charges and better rail services.