What role should the private sector play in road provision? Private contractors already perform a fair amount of the design, construction and maintenance of Australia's publicly owned roads. The evidence reviewed in this paper indicates benefits from further contracting out of road work to the private sector. In many cases, contracting out of road maintenance has reduced costs by 15 per cent or more. The evidence is less conclusive on the benefits of private investment in roads. Whether private toll roads are more efficient than other arrangements for road provision needs to be carefully examined case by case. Public ownership could be a better option than private ownership for some toll roads.

• Benefits of Private Sector Involvement In Road Provision: A Look at the Evidence
  
  wp_033.pdf
  (121.59 KB)

Natural disasters affect every State and Territory in Australia. Good information on the costs of natural disasters is required to assess the effectiveness of expenditure on disaster mitigation. This study focuses on national economic costs, using data from the Emergency Management Australia (EMA) database, over the period 1967 to 1999.

• Economic Costs of Natural Disasters in Australia
  
  report_103.pdf
  (2.06 MB)

Local roads are considered by regional communities to be a major contributor to their prosperity and social amenity. This report presents the first detailed picture of local road spending at the regional level. Recently, local roads have attracted considerable attention and debate at the national level. However, we simply do not have the detailed statistics and analyses required to understand the adequacy of local road spending nationally. Because there is no central source of data on regional roads, the writing of this report required the collection of financial data from no less than sixteen sources across Australia. The BTE understands that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has work in hand to upgrade regional statistics. Consequently our understanding of local road finances should improve over the next few years.

• Spending on Local Roads
  
  wp_044.pdf
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The agriculture-based Atherton Tablelands region of Far North Queensland experienced major change after the deregulation of the tobacco industry, and more recently, the dairy industry. The area was previously stable and relatively prosperous, but coping with continual change, unfamiliar market systems and the move to operating professional farm businesses, had caused some levels of distress. This working paper provides a social and economic overview of the region, an assessment of factors affecting the region and a brief discussion of economic development possibilities which might increase the economic resilience of the region.

• Atherton Tablelands Regional Analysis
  
  wp_043.pdf
  (1.17 MB)

The Warren Centre's Community Values Study identified traffic congestion as the main traffic and transport concern for Warringah region residents (51 per cent of those surveyed, compared with 42 per cent for Sydney). The closer to the city, the greater the congestion, although Forest Way, in the northern part of the peninsula, is also significantly congested. The slowest car speeds are on Spit and Military roads (average of 21 kilometres per hour, five to eight kilometres per hour slower than inner routes through Chatswood and Willoughby). At weekends particularly, the Spit Bridge, which opens regularly for boat traffic, is a major congestion point. Secondly, public transport was the focus of 29 per cent of the Warren Centre's survey respondents in the Warringah region, 17 per cent identifying lack of adequate public transport (compared with 12 per cent for Sydney) and 12 per cent indicating the reliability of public transport as their main concern (compared with 11 per cent for Sydney). With no rail service in the region, Warringah region residents have fewer public transport options available to them than many other parts of Sydney. 'East-west' bus services are more limited than 'north-south' services. Bus services also are not independent of congestion on the road system, although bus priority arrangements secure a travel time advantage for bus passengers relative to car passengers over the same route. Thirdly, the Spit Bridge and Roseville Bridge routes each pass through dense residential inner areas. Conflicts between through and local traffic, which include 'rat-running' through residential streets during peak periods, have adverse consequences for the local transport environment and residential amenity. On the Spit route, where traffic is heaviest, with six traffic lanes to accommodate and less than optimal lane widths, safety is an issue with insufficient space for a Jersey (crash) barrier on the winding Spit Hill. There are also kerbside markings at Spit Junction in the northbound direction, advising pedestrians that large vehicles may 'jump the kerb'.

• Improving Transport on the Warringah Peninsula: Issues And Options
  
  wp_053.pdf
  (2.33 MB)

The questions of why regions grow or fail to grow, and what, if anything, governments can do about it have attracted considerable interest and debate for many years. This report provides a select review of previous government intervention approaches and experiences in pursuit of regional development. The review provides useful insights into the purpose and outcomes of various government-sponsored interventions in Australia, and in a number of other comparable countries.

• Government Interventions in Pursuit of Regional Development: Learning from Experience
  
  wp_055.pdf
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Over the last few years, the Commonwealth has devoted considerable resources to the task of helping local government authorities maintain and upgrade their road systems. The major initiative was an extra $1.2 billion in road funding paid directly to councils through the Roads to Recovery programme but federal authorities have also been directed to work with their local government counterparts to improve road policies and practices. The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics' main contribution to this initiative has been to carry out two research projects. A regional analysis of council road finances was published last year in BTRE Working Paper 44, Spending on Local Roads, and this report presents a complementary study of State and Territory spending on roads including the assistance they provide to local government. It also identifies the roads for which State and council authorities are respectively responsible in each jurisdiction. The BTRE would like to thank State, Territory and Local Government organisations that assisted in the preparation of this report by providing information or advice on road finances. The data presented in this report is based on the responses provided by the States and Territories to the BTRE's Survey of State Government Spending on Roads. The BTRE has made every effort to ensure the figures are internally consistent and has relied on the State and Territories to ensure the accuracy of the data.

• State Spending on Roads
  
  wp_056.pdf
  (2.26 MB)

This paper looks at differing investment and growth patterns of irrigation dependent regions along the course of the Murray River. It derives estimates of investment in irrigated agriculture and in the associated manufacturing industries in the regions and then identifies the key underlying causes of regional differences.

• Working Paper 58: Investment Trends in the Lower Murray-Darling Basin
  
  wp_058.pdf
  (2.38 MB)

Australia, like many other developed countries, has experienced a decline in the importance of the manufacturing and agriculture sectors over recent decades, and strong growth in the services sector. In particular, Business services accounts for a large and growing share of national value added and employment. Between 1991 and 2001, the Business services industry was the single largest source of employment growth in all States and Territories.

• Focus on regions No. 1: Industry Structure
  
  ip_049.pdf
  (1.5 MB)
• Industry Structure Database 2003
  
  
  ip_049.xls
  (7.68 MB)

In July 2003 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, jointly with BTRE and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, were asked to investigate the appropriateness of maintaining an objective that biofuels, produced in Australia from renewable resources, contribute at least 350 ML to the total fuel supply by 2010. The joint study was initiated on 5 August 2003 with a final report required to be delivered on 19 December 2003. "Appropriateness" was to be considered in terms of net environmental benefits, net economic benefits, net regional benefits and industry viability. In turn, industry viability was to take into account announced reforms to fuel tax arrangements, including the phase out of effective excise relief.

• Appropriateness of a 350 Million Litre Biofuels Target
  
  cr_001.pdf
  (3.41 MB)