48. Demand for urban transport infrastructure is projected to increase significantly. The cost of congestion in our capital cities, estimated at $13.7 billion in 2011, is expected to increase to around $53.3 billion in 2031, or around 290 per cent, in the absence of additional capacity and/or demand management.
49. Demand for many key urban road and rail corridors is projected to significantly exceed current capacity by 2031.
50. Urban transport decisions need to complement land use decisions (especially about the supply and affordability of housing). Although some improvements have been made in this area, there remains a risk that community resistance to land use change and higher densities will undermine the economic, social and environmental benefits of investment in urban transport.
51. The national land freight task is expected to grow by 80 per cent between 2011 and 2031, with a large component of this task expected to be handled by road freight vehicles.
52. Accommodating this growth will require a focus on policy reform to enable the wider use of higher productivity heavy vehicles (such as B-triples), and selected investment (such as increasing bridge load limits and targeted safety improvements, aimed at improving the performance of national highway infrastructure).
53. Demand for freight rail infrastructure is projected to grow, in particular for resource bulk commodity haulage in WA, Queensland and NSW.
54. Freight rail will need to play a growing role in the movement of goods between ports and inland freight terminals, and in the movement of containerised and general freight over longer distances.
55. Demand for container terminal port infrastructure and bulk terminal infrastructure are both projected to grow faster than GDP. Traffic through some ports is projected to significantly exceed current capacity by 2031.
56. The nation's larger ports are operated as commercial enterprises, whether they are publicly or privately owned, or leased. Accordingly, investment requirements for these ports are expected to be met by user charges.
57. Given wider funding constraints, governments face challenges in ensuring adequate landside rail and road access to ports.
58. Demand for airport infrastructure is projected to approximately double between 2011 and 2031.
59. Australia's 10 busiest airports handle more than 80 per cent of total passenger traffic. Over the next 15 years, additional capacity will be required in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne. The regulatory framework for airports, which obliges private airport operators to provide required airport capacity, appears to be working appropriately.
60. The larger airports are all privately operated commercial enterprises, and investment requirements for these airports should be able to be met by user charges. However, given wider funding constraints, governments and airport operators face challenges in ensuring adequate landside access to airports.
61. A number of smaller airports are unlikely to have the throughput to cover their maintenance and potential capital costs. Governments will need to prioritise their outlays in support of these airports.
62. As well as being the largest infrastructure sector, transport is also the most challenging, with relatively high projected growth in demand, a low proportion of user-based funding and market-based pricing mechanisms, challenges with project selection processes, and emerging maintenance issues in some segments.