Exploring the Future of Transport in Australia: Challenges and Opportunities in a Vast Land: Oliver Bock-Brown
Australia is a large country. It’s one thing to know this, another to experience it. To reach the southeast of the country—where you’ll find Melbourne and Sydney—you first have to fly across almost the entire expanse of the country. This part of the flight alone is well over four hours, which is slightly longer than it would take to fly from the UK to Turkey. That, of course, is only a small part of the overall journey, which comes in at something like twenty-two hours of flying. I recently got to experience this journey when I had the chance to visit Australia. And with an interest in future impacts of autonomous mobility systems—and after recovering from the jetlag—I used the trip both to explore the unique Australian context of transport systems, and to speak to a range of people about the subject. The sixth largest country in the world, Australia has a land area of nearly 7.7 million square kilometres. That’s broadly similar in size to the United States, but with a population of o