Despite popular interest in the contribution of transport to emissions of greenhouse gases, little comprehensive information has been published to date on the costs and effectiveness of the various abatement measures espoused.

• Transport and Greenhouse: Costs and Options for Reducing Emissions
  
  report_094.pdf
  (7.46 MB)

The aim of this Working Paper is to estimate the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions by using a sink rather than by reducing the amount of travel or fuel usage. Because the sink can also be applied to other sectors of the economy, it provides a standard of comparison for most policy instruments.

• Trees and Greenhouse: Costs of Sequestering Australian Transport Emissions
  
  wp_023.pdf
  (4.72 MB)

This Working Paper forms part of a research project investigating into certain issues concerned with measuring the benefits of investment in transport infrastructure. The focus of the project is on possible benefits from increased employment; and benefits often claimed to be significant but understated by benefit-cost analyses, especially; cost savings from business logistic responses to improvements in infrastructure (for example, substitution of transport for inventory); rural regional development benefits; and the indirect benefits that an item of transport infrastructure provides to non-users of that infrastructure.

• Econometric Evidence on the Benefits of Infrastructure Investment: an Australian Perspective
  
  wp_025.pdf
  (3.03 MB)

Externalities in the Transport Sector: Key Issues is the first part in a series of Information Sheets that will provide estimates of the costs of externalities generated by road, rail, air and sea transport.

• Externalities in the Transport Sector
  
  is_010.pdf
  (1.52 MB)

Article 16 bis was a last-minute addition to the Protocol negotiated in Kyoto in December 1997 at the third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It calls on the Parties to develop rules and guidelines for emissions trading 'for the purpose of meeting quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments'. No concrete consideration has been given yet to the modalities of introducing a scheme for trading emissions in countries like Australia. It is therefore timely to identify at least some of the practical implications that any such scheme might have, if it were to be introduced at some time in the future. Most of the literature on trading in greenhouse emissions has focused either on international aspects, or on general principles. Much of the literature is also incestuous, because the same examples of the limited number of existing (non-greenhouse) schemes tend to be drawn on in each article or book. Little has been written on the likely effects on various sectors of domestic economies. Even less has been written on the difficult issue of how to take account of carbon sinks. By contrast, this Working Paper breaks new ground by identifying a number of practical issues that merit serious consideration if a workable scheme is to be implemented in the transport sector. Nevertheless, the authors are conscious of the strong likelihood that not all relevant issues have been addressed. Any comment would therefore be gratefully received.

• Tradeable Permits in Transport
  
  wp_037.pdf
  (183.48 KB)

This Report develops further the findings of earlier work by the Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics and the Research and Development Agency of the Indonesian Ministry of Communications on transport in northern Australia and eastern Indonesia. It explores the adequacy of tourism and transport infrastructure in eastern Indonesia to a greater depth of detail than was possible in the earlier work. The focus of the report is on international tourism, because of its importance to eastern Indonesia following the onset of the financial crisis.

• Adequacy of Tourism Transport Infrastructure in Eastern Indonesia
  
  report_099.pdf
  (24.33 MB)

Australian cities have been transformed from fairly tightly knit core-and-spoke configurations, to sprawling suburban low-density configurations. This transformation of urban land use has been accompanied and made possible by a rapid improvement and spread of the road system, and an even more rapid expansion in per person car ownership.

• Urban Transport: Looking Ahead
  
  is_014.pdf
  (336.24 KB)

Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is a valuable and widely used tool. To reduce the odds of misuse, this report probes some important methodological issues, especially as they relate to transport projects. The discussion is relatively non-technical and draws on case studies. The issues examined include claims that transport projects fail to measure certain benefits: employment creation, regional development, logistic adaptations and 'positive externalities'. Also examined are the choice of discount rate, the treatment of taxes, the valuation of travel time, multi-criteria analysis as an alternative to BCA, and the role of national economic models.

• Facts and Furphies in Benefit-Cost Analysis: Transport
  
  report_100.pdf
  (1.33 MB)

This report prepared for the Australian Transport Council reviews international practice in reducing greenhouse emissions in the transport sector against an economic framework.

• Greenhouse Policy Options for Transport
  
  report_105.pdf
  (659.08 KB)

This report presents the results of a BTRE study to update base case (or 'business-as-usual') projections of greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. The work was undertaken on behalf of the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO).

The work updates previous Bureau projections of transport sector greenhouse gas emissions published in Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE) Report 88 (Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Australian Transport: Long-term projections) and BTCE Report 94 (Transport and Greenhouse: Costs and options for reducing emissions).

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transport: Australian Trends to 2020
  
  report_107.pdf
  (1.29 MB)