An environmental take on Australia’s traffic congestion ‘crisis’: using road pricing to achieve sustainable transport

Major Australian cities are facing a traffic congestion ‘crisis’, the result of unsustainable transport behaviours such as excessive importance and reliance on private vehicle transport. While engineering, infrastructure and economic-based solutions have been proposed to alleviate the symptoms of congestion, these do not address its underlying causes relating to unsustainable transport behaviours. Regulatory solutions that contribute to alleviating congestion can be identified by alternatively approaching congestion from an environmental perspective, as a challenge for achieving sustainable development in relation to indicators such as liveable cities and climate change. On the premise that congestion is an environmental externality of transport, environmental taxation literature can be used to guide the development of regulatory measures that create an integrated system-wide transport pricing scheme to promote sustainable transport.