Sustainable Australia welcomes the NRMA acknowledgement that Australia’s population growth is the cause of our ever-worsening traffic congestion.
In its latest ‘Open Road’ magazine, the NRMA stated that “Australia’s population has surpassed 24 million – 17 years earlier than forecast... Some 16 million trips are made every day across the metropolitan area. Over the next decade that will become almost 20 million. It has become obvious that even a completed road and public transport network is in danger of being immediately inundated.”[1]
But Sustainable Australia Party rejects the NRMA’s notion that we can simply try to manage never-ending population growth.
Sustainable Australia’s Senate candidate in New South Wales, William Bourke, says “We know that our record immigration intake of 200,000 per year is the main cause of our rapid population growth.
“Traffic congestion is not just an inconvenience that lowers our quality of life and costs us billions in economic productivity.[2] It puts lives at risk,” said Mr Bourke.
While campaigning in Penrith recently, Mr Bourke spoke with an emergency services worker who told him of the increased response times that traffic congestion imposes on emergency workers trying to get to the scene of accidents.
“There’s only one serious solution to our inundated roads. It is decent public transport and lower immigration, from the current 200,000 per year to our long term, sustainable average of 70,000 people.
“And there’s only one party that gets that… its Sustainable Australia,” says Mr Bourke.
View William Bourke’s discussion with an Emergency Services worker in Penrith
View William Bourke’s “30 minute cities” Video
Web: www.sustainableaustralia.org.au
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