Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook 2025: Roads chapter
Chapter 4: Roads
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook 2025 - Download full report PDF
- Road—Yearbook 2025 (266 KB) - Download Excel file
- For information on road-related revenue and expenditure - see chapter 3 of the 2025 Yearbook
This chapter provides information on Australian roads including length, use, the vehicle fleet, and the number of vehicle licences.
- An estimated 264 billion vehicle kilometres were travelled on Australia's roads in 2024–25.
- In 2024, there were 476,000 km of paved roads in Australia.
- 20 million Australians had vehicle licences at 2024–25.
- In 2024–25, Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) comprised 59% of new motor vehicle sales (excluding motorcycles) compared with only 33% ten years earlier.
Figure 8 shows total vehicle kilometres by vehicle type. Figure 9 shows Australia’s national road network. Total vehicle kilometres travelled fell significantly during the COVID pandemic, only surpassing their previous 2017–18 peak in 2023–24.
Figure 8 Vehicle kilometres travelled by vehicle type
Source: Table 4.2
Figure 9 Map of national road network
Source: DITRDCSA, 2022
Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook 2025: Rail chapter
Chapter 5: Rail
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics Yearbook 2025 - Download PDF
- Rail—Yearbook 2025 (99 KB) - Download Excel file
This chapter provides information on rail expenditure, activity and network lengths. Estimates of passenger kilometres up to 2024-25 can be found in Chapter 2 - Passengers.
- People in Melbourne use light rail more than any other city with 155 million passengers in 2023–24.
- People in Sydney use heavy rail more than any other city with 352 million passengers in 2023–24.
- In 2023-24 there were $36 billion of public rail-related expenditure.
Figure 10 shows Australia’s network of railways by gauge and Figure 11 shows rail public transport patronage by million passenger movements. This refers to all trips on suburban rail networks and is based on reporting from train operators. Passenger movements were trending upwards in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide before starting to fall sharply in 2019–20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2023–24 patronage numbers had generally still not returned to 2018–19 levels.
Figure 10 Australia’s railways, by gauge
Source: BITRE (2025), Trainline 12
Figure 11 Public transit patronage on heavy rail, Australian capital city networks
Sources: BITRE (2015), Long-term trends in urban public transport
BITRE (2025), Trainline 12
Prior Trainline publications
Infrastructure construction dashboard
The transport infrastructure construction dashboard shows costs for projects that are underway or completed according to whether they are owned privately or publicly.
Infrastructure and the Economy - yearbook 2023
Chapter 1
Download data
This chapter provides data on the Australian economy including the value added by Australian infrastructure industries in addition to:
- employment in the transport, energy, communication and water industries
- average weekly earnings for road, rail, water and air and space industries
- price indices
- population
- 9.2 per cent of Australia’s GDP was accounted for by Australia’s major infrastructure industries in 2022-23.
- 1 million people were employed in Australia’s major infrastructure industries in August 2023.
- $1,441 is the average weekly earnings for the road transport industry in 2021.
- 84 per cent of people employed by the road transport industry identify as male.
The gross value added of major infrastructure industries as a percentage of GDP has remained relatively stable since 1974-75, generally ranging between 9-10% of GDP, with the transport postal and warehousing industry specifically ranging between 4-5% over the same timeframe. In terms of employment, although employment in the transport, postal and warehousing industry have grown in overall terms, as a percentage of total Australian employment, it has stayed at around 5% for the last 30 years.
Figure 1 Australian employment numbers in selected major infrastructure industries
Figure 1 shows employment statistics for various transport industries as at August of each year. Although in 2021 COVID-19 had reduced Australian employment numbers in road, rail, and air and space transport industries, this year has shown signs of recovery, closing in on 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
Figure 2 Leadership positions held in transport industries, by gender
Figure 2 provides an insight into gender statistics by comparing the number of leadership positions held by men and women within the transport industry. In 2019, leadership positions in the transport industry were predominantly occupied by males, with 2258 males in Chief Executive Officer, Key Management Personnel, Chair Person and Director roles compared to 460 females.
Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2025
The aim of the Australian Infrastructure Statistics and Transport Yearbook is to provide a single, comprehensive annual source of infrastructure statistics for use by policymakers, industry, transport analysts and the wider Australian community. You can download the PDF or data files here:
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2025 (PDF 9.3 MB)
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2025 data (ZIP: 1.4 MB)
For a summary of each chapter select from the list below:
Assessment of road improvements in remote and regional areas
The report addresses the challenge that low traffic volumes in remote and regional areas pose to traditional cost–benefit analysis (CBA) methods to support road improvements in these areas in line with community expectations and government policy objectives. Roads in remote and regional areas are often provided at standards above what would be considered economically efficient levels under traditional CBA methods, but there is currently no clear way to make a recommendation as to an acceptable standard. This report develops ways to improve the efficiency, equity and transparency of decision-making for road funding in remote and regional areas. CBA is retained as the core appraisal tool with the additions of social benefits, wider economic benefits and equity weights. The development of the equity weights draws on recent thinking about equity and distributive justice from literature in the disciplines of philosophy, economics and transport planning.
Economic measures of general aviation in Australia
GA plays a range of essential roles in Australia including servicing regional communities, delivering education and health services, regional freight and transport, tourism, recreation, agricultural mustering and spraying, instructional flying, sport and pleasure flying, and emergency services. However, GA is not a stand-alone category in Australia’s System of National Accounts. Instead, it makes up a small subset of a very wide range of economic activities, making it difficult to estimate its actual economic impact. This study considers a range of sources, including innovative methods of matching aircraft registrations to business activity, to estimate the contribution of GA to Australia’s economy.
This compendium provides insights, analysis, and an understanding of the railway industry. Australia's railways are evolving due to changes outside and within the industry. These changes include logistics, commodity flows, technology, urban patronage, and regional passenger services. The publication presents an overview and data on railway transport tasks performed, characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs and aspects of railway performance including safety, environment and reliability.
Trainline 12 gives an overview of freight, urban and non-urban passenger rail. The report analyses traffic levels, the provision of infrastructure and rolling stock, and railway performance. It is the twelfth in the publication series.
Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2024
The aim of the Australian Infrastructure Statistics and Transport Yearbook is to provide a single, comprehensive annual source of infrastructure statistics for use by policymakers, industry, transport analysts and the wider Australian community. You can download the PDF or data files:
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2024 (PDF 9.2 MB)
- Australian Infrastructure and Transport Statistics—Yearbook 2024 data (ZIP: 2 MB)
For a summary of each chapter select from the list below:
Trainline is a compendium of Australia's railways, providing insights, analysis and an understanding of the railway industry. Australia's railways are evolving, with changes within and outside the industry. These changes include logistics, commodity flows, technology, urban patronage and regional passenger services. The publication presents an overview and data on railway transport tasks performed; characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs; and aspects of railway performance including safety, environment and reliability.
Trainline 11 gives an overview of freight, urban and non-urban passenger rail. The report analyses traffic levels, the provision of infrastructure and rolling stock, and railway performance. It is the eleventh in the publication series.