In the lead up to this year’s Budget, ALGA is calling for $300 million per year for councils to improve freight productivity and infrastructure on Australia’s local roads.
Local governments manage around 77 percent of Australia’s roads by length and play an important role in authorising heavy vehicle access on local roads. However councils only collect 3.5 percent of national taxation and are heavily reliant on funding from other levels of government.
As a result, ALGA is seeking $300 million a year over four years to:
- Support councils to implement a new national heavy vehicle automated access system including network pilot projects in 2023/24.
- Provide route and asset assessment support to councils to better understand the condition of infrastructure and enable better-informed access decisions.
- Provide capability-building and data collection support to councils to enable alignment with national data standards and prepare their systems to integrate with the automated national heavy vehicle access system, and
- Support fixing, upgrading and maintaining key freight infrastructure identified by councils and the heavy vehicle sector to support increased productivity on first and last-mile council freight networks across all jurisdictions.
Read more: https://alga.com.au/app/uploads/ALGA-Pre-Budget-Submission-23-24_Freight.pdf
Posted 22 March, 2023