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
  
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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
  
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The BTRE projects that the total freight task will continue to grow strongly. Such growth will increase the infrastructure maintenance needs and possibly hasten the need for capacity expansion. Setting prices for infrastructure use that reflect costs provides important signals as to the appropriate level of transport activity, choice of transport mode, and the level of infrastructure spending. At the Australian Logistics Council (ALC) meeting on 7 November 2002, the Council asked BTRE to provide a comparative analysis of current land transport pricing regimes and their objectives and to present the findings at the next Council meeting, held on 27 February 2003. This working paper comprises the paper prepared for the ALC and already released by the ALC as a discussion paper.

• Land Transport Infrastructure Pricing: An Introduction
  
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On rural roads, the speed that a driver chooses will affect their travel time, vehicle operating costs and crash costs. Recent Austroads valuations of these costs are used in this paper to estimate the total economic cost to society of travelling at different speeds on roads with different crash rates. Critical in this analysis is estimating the change in crash cost that would result from a change in vehicle speeds. This report assumes a 10 km/h change in average speeds produces a 30% change in crash costs based on international evidence. For a hypothetical mix of cars and trucks on a rural road with an average crash cost, the speed that produces the lowest total of travel time cost, vehicle operating cost and crash cost is between 90 and 100 km/h. On a hypothetical road with a low crash rate (and a crash cost one quarter of the average), the optimum speed is between 110 and 120 km/h. Achieving different speed regimes is not just a matter of changing the posted speed limit. The paper concludes by suggesting that ITS technology could be used to vary and manage speeds.

• Road Speed Limits: Economic Effects of Allowing more Flexibility
  
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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
  
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This paper presents the results of a desk study of the road freight industry. The aim of the study is to update our knowledge of the Australian freight industry by bringing together and analysing information that is currently available. The study is intended as a 'building block' for a future larger survey-based study of the road freight and logistics industries. It is now 20 years since comprehensive studies of the road freight industry were undertaken, by the Bureau of Transport Economics and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

• An Overview of the Australian Road Freight Transport Industry
  
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This paper presents the results of applying a policy model to simulate the effects on greenhouse gas emissions from trucking in Sydney of various abatement scenarios. These include vehicle efficiency scenarios, traffic efficiency scenarios and alternative infrastructure and land use scenarios. The model developed is quite comprehensive. It includes the effects of the interaction of trucks with car traffic in the city. And it extends the results, not only to the recognised greenhouse gases, but also to the effect of the scenarios on pollutant emissions from road transport and thus on pollution in the Sydney airshed. The research reported on here shows that, using the model developed, answers can be given as to detailed effects of transport policy measures on emissions in Sydney. Just as importantly, it points to methods that can be used to build such a model in other cities. The series of five technical papers describing the construction and make-up of the model and its capabilities is available on the CSIRO website (www.energytransformed.csiro.au). CSIRO was the co-ordinator of the research, with Parsons Brinckerhoff and the Transport Systems Centre of the University of South Australia contributing components. CSIRO prepared this report. The Transport and Population Data Centre of the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources provided the datasets of traffic and now owns the model framework. All of the research was made possible by a grant from the Australian Greenhouse Office.

• Modelling Responses of Urban Freight Patterns to Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scenarios
  
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The possibility of sustained high world oil prices has fueled concern over long-term supply. The question is particularly relevant for transport as a major user of oil with few viable alternatives. Internationally, there is a vigorous debate over the ability of this supply to satisfy ever-increasing demand, particularly with the growth in large fast-growth countries such as China and India. The debate can be complicated and, at times, highly emotional. The aim of this Working Paper is to provide an objective summary and analysis of the main issues in the debate.

• Is the World Running Out of Oil? A Review of the Debate
  
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This report is part of a series of BTRE research on the socioeconomic costs of transport impacts and focuses on the health impact costs of motor vehicle emissions in Australian capital cities.

• Health Impacts of Transport Emissions in Australia: Economic Costs
  
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The Australian Government's AusLink initiative represents a new approach to planning and funding Australia's land transport infrastructure. Under AusLink the Australian Government will fund projects that have the greatest contribution to Australia's long-term economic prosperity, irrespective of the transport mode. AusLink will involve an integrated approach to planning, with three complementary levels of analysis:

1. strategic network assessment;
2. corridor assessments and;
3. detailed project assessments.

Projections of future transport demand are a critical input into these assessments. In order to undertake more informed strategic network assessments, the BTRE has developed two models for projecting future non-urban passenger and freight transport demand: OZPASS non-urban passenger travel forecasting model; and FreightSim inter-regional freight forecasting model. This paper outlines the structure of these models and demonstrates their application to projecting future passenger and freight movements across the non-urban sections of the AusLink National Network. Readers should note that the road traffic projections presented in this paper are based on passenger travel and freight movement data for 1999 and road traffic data for various years between 1993 and 1996. These data sets were the most up-to-date data available to the BTRE when the analysis was undertaken. The BTRE intends to update these projections, using more current passenger and freight movements data, more recent regional population estimates and, in cooperation with the States and Territories, more recent road traffic data, when this data becomes available.

• Demand Projections for Auslink Non-Urban Corridors: Methodology and Projections
  
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