Trucks are heavy and make modern life possible. You need thick concrete and rebar and a subsurface and a lot more besides. Trucks also leave the populated areas and need a lot of miles of that heavy duty road.

A bicycle requires a dirt path. Maybe some asphalt if you're feeling fancy. They barely leave the populated areas too. Few people cycle in the outback.

The budget makes sense. Australia isn't exactly crowded like much of Europe, you can't just copy their models and expect the same results.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The budget makes sense

0.1% makes sense? Jesus that's a dumb take.

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago

How much do you think a road costs versus a bike path? If anything, bike paths are over funded.

Have you ever looked into what goes into a road? And what goes into a bike path/sidewalk?

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Actually I decided to look it up. It's about $2.5 million per mile for a basic 2-lane asphalt road. https://www.welovepaving.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-pave-one-mile-of-road-in-california/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Paving+one+mile+of+a%2Ccosts+of+%24560%2C000+to+%241%2C050%2C000.

That number can get much higher very quickly if you use concrete, have more lanes, need bridges or tunnels, and whatever else comes up.

A mile of 4 ft wide concrete sidewalk is about $182,265.6

https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/cost/concrete-sidewalk-price/

And very few are walking/bicycling from Perth to Brisbane, but there's still trucks going in between which depend on the road network.

More money per mile and more miles means it costs more.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But what you're neglecting there is the fact that our road network is already complete. Aside from new developments, all it needs is maintenance. Our bike network is woeful. There are almost no trips that can be taken entirely on separated bikeways. There are hundreds of kilometres of bikeways needed in Brisbane alone before we could be considered to have even a moderately successful bike network.

And, again, this is positive ROI.

Also: we have too much of a reliance on trucks as it is. Any inter-city road that gets more than half a dozen road trains per day should probably have actual trains to take that freight far more efficiently. Ditto roads seeing the equivalent of that in regular semis. But that's a conversation for another thread.

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago

Y'all apparently pave it with asphalt, which has sky high maintenance costs compared to concrete + rebar. That would be something I consider to be the actual issue, especially when you run super heavy truck trains like y'all do. If I was in charge of your road network, which I'm not, I'd start paving your big roads properly. But that's neither here nor there.

[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are these miles and ft you speak of ?

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, 1.69 (nice) Kilometers and .305 Meters, or roughly 1/2 of a Futball/Soccer Ball

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry we're not big on soccer here. Got that in football lengths? (I'll accept either Aussie Rules or rugby footballs.)

[–] Kaboom@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago

A foot is about two cm longer than a Rugby ball