According to the ABS 18.2 million motor vehicles are registered for road use across the country. The majority is made up of passenger vehicles travelling for personal or other use (53.5%). Travel to and from work and for business purposes made up the remaining 46.5%.
The ABS Survey of Motor Vehicle Use also found that NSW had both the greatest number of registered vehicles in the nation (29.3%) and highest number of kilometres covered (28.3%). NT had the smallest (around 0.85% for both).
All up, Australian passenger vehicles travelled a total of 175,899 million kilometres in 2015-16. That’s an average of 12,827 kilometres per vehicle.
At an average speed of 60 kilometres per hour, that’s a staggering 8.9 days behind the wheel.
More if you’re one of the 30,000 or so Coasties who commute each workday.
Ford’s commuter calculator estimates around 417 days is spent behind the wheel over your working life…the time it takes to watch 5298 movies!
Consider this, the average Coastie travels almost 13,000 kilometres each year, and uses 10.6 litres per 100km, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
And according to Ford’s commuter calculator, those who take the black snake to Sydney for work (or between Newcastle and the Central Coast), spend about 1.1 year of their life on the road!
Even longer with troubles in traffic or on the trains.
The recent deluge has caused delays on both road and rail.
With some Coasties caught in a commute of over 3 hours each way!
A joint study in 2011 between the University of Canberra and insurance company AMP found that on any given workday, if you take the train even just as far as Woy Woy to Central, you’re riding the rails for about 3 hours a day. That’s 4 years over your career sharing the carriage with questionable characters…1460 days when you could’ve been parked on your lounge instead catching up on 18,563 movies, and saving yourself $175,000 in the process.
And the commute is getting longer and more expensive with the changes to Opal cards, the hike in petrol prices, and more toll roads.
So, how are you travelling by comparison?
See how your commute compares here
Oh and a heads-up: there’ll be delays or disruptions this weekend with trackwork on our local line from 4.30pm Saturday April 8th to 10.30am Sunday April 9th, with buses replacing trains between Wyong and Gosford.
Check for trackwork or other service interruptions on the rail line here
And listen to Star104.5 for regular traffic updates. Be sure to phone any through to 02 4365 1045.
