Addressing Fiscal Constraints in Australia’s Public Transport

We talk a lot about the need to drive mode shift to address the economic cost of congestion. This is imperative. But there's another angle here. We also need to consider the current level of farebox cost recovery across our public transport operators.

We need to acknowledge the financial challenges associated with the delivery of our public transport services. Over the last 20 years, in many jurisdictions, farebox cost recovery has declined significantly. In general, for every dollar that's required to operate our public transport services, we only recover about $0. 20 from the customer.

My concern is that this will ultimately compromise the capacity of our governments to deliver the public transport services that the community deserve. This extends to the right service coverage, service levels and service quality. With increasing fiscal constraints, this is a challenge that all our governments will need to address as a matter of urgency.