We're at another significant inflection point in the development of public transport in Australia. If we look back eighty years ago, following the second World War, Australians and New Zealanders flocked to the private car, and our public transport networks quickly became underutilised from the heady peaks of the 1920s.
We experienced a gradual recovery in public transport across the 80s and 90s, and our public transport agencies then had to give attention to how do we put in place additional capacity to support this growing public transport market. On the back of that, we've seen significant investment in public transport in our major cities, rapid bus corridors, metro systems, light rail. But then came the pandemic, and the message now was not to use public transport, which undid a lot of that excellent work that has been undertaken over the last twenty years to drive public transport patronage growth.
We need a mix of both carrots and sticks to rebuild public transport patronage.
In my view, public transport agencies are doing a nice job around the carrots in putting in place a number of initiatives to drive growth, but it won't be enough. We need to address the obvious market failure associated with car use and increasing congestion in our major cities.
While not directly transferable to the Australian context, sixty-five percent of journeys in London are made by sustainable modes: public transport, walking, cycling. Much of this can be attributed to the progressive measures taken by government over an extended period of time through specific pricing initiatives to discourage car use. It is extremely pleasing to see the work currently being undertaken in Auckland. As an example, the Auckland Road User Charging pilot will be an important step towards comprehensive road user charging, and no doubt there'll be a lot of lessons to be learned from that specific pilot.