We're driving the country into a jam

Want to keep the economy moving? Then we have to avoid situations such as this. Source: AP

THE Prime Minister and I have something in common: we both want to live close to where we work.

So as Julia Gillard decamps to the outer suburbs of Sydney this week, I'm heading the other direction, moving to an apartment in the city.

I'm ditching the car and walking to work from Monday.

Phew. 

No more traffic. No more tailgaters. No more erratic driving from increasingly irate and desperate fellow commuters.

Traffic jams are not only infuriating; they are one of the worst drains on productivity and the economy.

Having commuted by car to work for the past five years now, I have formed a theory.

One day, some day soon, I expect our capital cities will come to a standstill.

I imagine one day we'll just all get in the car to go to work, get stuck and have to abandon our vehicles and start life afresh on the side of highways.

The traffic snarl will bend in on itself and our cities will become massive car parks.

This is what I imagine when I'm stuck in traffic.

Australia's cities are groaning under the strain of increasing populations and our road and public transport infrastructure is failing to keep pace.

According to a recent report by the department of infrastructure and transport titled "State of Australian Cities'', the great dispersal of jobs towards our outer suburbs is reversing.

Increasingly, more and more of our successful industries are located in the CBDs of cities, making efficient transport routes in and out of the cities all the more crucial.

While manufacturing has shrunk as a share of the economy, our professional services, finance, administration and communications industries which tend to be centrally located have grown.

Every day, millions of workers must make their way into and out of our cities in the same 90-minute windows. Morning travel at peak times has increased sharply in the last 30 years.

The number of kilometres travelled per person has also increased steadily over the past century.

In 1900, the average Australian barely travelled anywhere at all. By the 1960s, as we settled in the suburbs and bought motor vehicles, the average number of kilometres travelled by each Australian each year had risen to around 4000 kilometres. Today the average Australian travels more than 10,000 kilometres a year.

Our modes of transport are changing too.

In 1900, a third of people walked to work. About a quarter used heavy rail, 15 per cent used light rail or trams and fully 15 per cent rode a horse, or horse drawn vehicle, to work.

By the 1960s, about half of trips were by car, a fifth by heavy rail and the proportion walking dropped almost to zero.

Today, more than 80 percent of our journeys are by car.

Time spent in traffic is dead time. To the extent that workers arrive to work late, or stressed, it reduces productivity.

But the real cruelty is that most of this increased travel time is not born on the boss's balance sheet, but on your own.

More time in traffic means less time at home with your family or relaxing.

It's only getting worse, and it's time we did something about it.

It falls to state governments to adequately plan for investment in roads, rail and other public transport. The federal government, with its AAA credit rating, is in a good position to borrow to contribute funding to the urgent works that need to be done. According to Infrastructure Australia, our cities have multi billion dollar infrastructure backlogs.

But it's not just about providing transport, but well located housing as well.

As more and more jobs shift to the inner city, providing for new urban infill and high-density building is imperative. No more "not in my back yard ism''.

Telecommuting will also help. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer earned the ire of her workers last week by insisting all Yahoo employees working remotely must instead present to the office every day.

Of course the boss wants to know you don't spend all day in your pyjamas (although arguably, being more comfortably attired may add to productivity).

But encouraging workers to use of technology to work from home would provide much needed relief for our clogged roads. The government's National Broadband Network, for all its expense, could open the way for many more of us to work remotely from home.

If all this fails, it follows that one day soon we may have to start thinking about introducing congestion charging like London. Putting a price on trips at peak hours would force people to travel at different times, catch public transport or be penalised. The revenue raised could even fund better and more reliable public transport.

Congestion charging might not be popular, but it would stop our cities coming to a standstill.

Me, I'm looking forward to ditching the car, saving some time and burning some calories as I walk to work.

Win win win.

Jessica Irvine is National Economics Editor. Follow Jessica Irvine on Twitter

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