LAND USE PLANNING FOR TRANSPORT ENERGY CONSERVATION IN AUSTRALIAN CITIES

This paper was presented to Jubilee Anzaas Conference Science for a Substainable Society Section 4: Architecture & Planning Section Sustainable Urban Form, Adelaide, May 1980. The transport energy characteristics of Australian cities have been examined by obtaining detailed data on public and private transport. The results show: (1) the dominance of the private automobile and hence of gasoline as the primary transport fuel; (2) electric trains and trams are clearly the most efficient public transport mode and where they form the backbone of a public transport service, the patronage and energy efficiency are superior to a more bus- orientated service; (3) Perth and Adelaide on a per capita basis use more cars and hence more energy than Melbourne and Brisbane with Sydney having some 20 per cent lower energy per capita. These transport patterns were then found to correlate significantly with certain land use parameters. All the cities except Brisbane have transport patterns related to the density and degree of centralisation in land use. Brisbane's lower car use as well as the other cities' patterns appear to be related to the level of traffic restraint measured in terms of per capita road availability, traffic congestion, and CBD parking availability. Energy conservation can be pursued through increasing density and centralisation as medium term aims with traffic restraint or planned congestion as an immediate policy to introduce along with an upgrading of public transport (A). (TRRL)