Christopher Hughes
Research expert covering Australia and New Zealand
Transport infrastructure in Australia - statistics & facts
Australia’s domestic transport infrastructure relies predominantly on its aviation network. This can be attributed mostly to the geographical size of the country; Australia is nearly as large as North America. However, unlike North America, Australia has a comparatively small, sparsely distributed population.
Roads and vehicles
In terms of ground-based infrastructure, Australia has an extensive road network, which covers well in excess of 875 thousand kilometers nationally, the majority of which are non-urban roads. There are around 15 million registered passenger vehicles in Australia, a significant majority of which are fuelled by unleaded petrol. However, the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia is experiencing significant year-on-year growth in line with global trends.Domestic passenger aviation
Due in part to the geographical size of Australia, air travel ranks second in terms of total national passenger travel in Australia, after road usage. The three busiest airports in the country by passenger movements are Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney), each attracting around seven million passengers annually. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting border closures, aircraft were grounded with the result that the number of available flights, and the number of available seats, declined significantly during 2020 and 2021. Despite this, industry forecasts predict a strong recovery for domestic aviation.
