CAR said that tolls for South Australian roads were the best answer to the state?s infrastructure needs.
?The release of Infrastructure Australia?s annual report [to the Council of Australian Governments on a national infrastructure plan for the next 50 years] is a timely reminder of the challenges South Australia faces in funding its infrastructure needs,? CAR committee chairman Barrie Hosking said.
?The report makes it clear that Australia has reached a point where the traditional funding models are no longer able to provide the community with the infrastructure it needs and governments will need to look to the private sector to fund projects.?
Even as far back as 2011, Infrastructure Australia?s annual report to COAG emphasised the urgent need to reform the financing of major infrastructure projects across Australia.
Hosking said that the report points out that arresting the decline in the nation?s productivity means freeing up the freight bottlenecks.
In the past Sir Rod Eddington, the chairman of Infrastructure Australia, has said that government reforms to infrastructure planning and delivery were frustratingly slow and this had resulted in a slowing of Australia?s productivity.
?Nowhere is this more evident than in South Australia where our key freight route, the North-South Corridor, has hit a funding brick wall and completion of the project remains years away,? Hosking said.
According to CAR, benefits to the state by completing the project were enormous but the SA community needed to embrace the user pays principle. CAR believes an efficient road system is critical to Adelaide and South Australia?s future economic development.
Sources: Committee for Adelaide Roads, Infrastructure Australia