Australians appear to have kept driving despite soaring petrol prices, as calls grow for free or discounted public transport to help people save fuel and get off the road.
Traffic and public transport usage is holding steady, with experts warning the country needs to change travel methods or start working from home if fuel costs keep rising.
Vehicle numbers on key Sydney roads have not shown a decline since the last week of February, before the US attacked Iran, damaging oil supply and forcing up petrol prices.
Weekly petrol bills have risen $20 or more since the end of February for the average household using 35 litres of fuel.
Yet New South Wales weekly traffic data showed little change on Parramatta Road and a small drop Pennant Hills Road from 23 February to 22 March.
Sydney’s public transport usage barely moved over the period, according to Transport for NSW. Opal card tap-ons for bus and ferry trips had fallen in March compared with 2025, while a boom in train usage in February had eased.
Traffic on key Melbourne roads, including the M1, M80, Princes Freeway, Tullamarine Freeway and West Gate Tunnel, held steady, after accounting for the impact of partial road closures.
Foot traffic held up in Melbourne’s CBD up to 22 March, with the City of Melbourne’s steady pedestrian counts showing little sign of any change in office employees working from home.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailMany Australians live too far from train and bus routes to ditch their car, leaving regional and outer urban residents with no option but to drive to their workplace.
Myki taps, meanwhile, fell in the second week of March from the last week of February or the same week in 2025. The state government introduced credit card and phone touch-ons the next week, which it said had enabled more than 40,000 successful taps.
Canberra’s bus and light rail network also recorded fewer trips in the second week of March compared to the end of February, government data showed.
The Senate was expected to pass a motion calling on federal support for “free or affordable” public transport, moved by David Pocock and the Greens. While some Nationals senators supported the motion, the Liberals - with the exception of Andrew McLachlan - abstained and it was voted down.
At the state level, NSW’s Liberal opposition, Business NSW and the rail, tram and bus union had each called for cut-price fares.
“Get them out of their cars, give them immediate cost-of-living relief, and let’s use the fuel where we need to use it,” the union’s Toby Warnes said on Sunday.
The NSW government ruled that out, with the premier saying 75% of the cost was already picked up by the taxpayer.
Australians struggled to cut back on driving during past fuel price spikes, said Geoffrey Clifton, a transport expert at the University of Sydney.
“In the short term, households tend to cop it and then, as these things go on for longer, we start to see households making different decisions,” Clifton said.
Research from Transurban, which operates tollways in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, has previously found motorway traffic holds up even when fuel prices rise. The company declined to share whether traffic had decreased in recent weeks.
If petrol prices held up, though, commuters would start swapping to alternatives, from public transport to electric cars and bikes to walking, Clifton said.
Ebike provider Lime reported a nearly 10% jump in trips in Sydney from the first week of March to the second week. While rental ebikes and e-scooters typically replace public transport or walking, the lift could be due to people giving up shorter car trips, Clifton said.
Queensland’s public transport system, which has 50c fares, saw a slight increase in usage from 10 March to 17 March.
A spokesperson for Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads said: “It is too early to determine whether higher fuel prices are influencing overall network patronage.”
Western Australian public transport trips picked up from 2.9m in the last week of February to 3m in the second week of March, though patronage had been on the rise over the last year as the state government opened a new rail line and cut fares.
Traffic in Perth had not changed, though, with one of the city’s busiest roads, Kwinana Freeway at Narrows Bridge, recording average traffic of just over 200,000 vehicles a day in the second week of March, in line with the year so far.
“We’re committed to supporting Western Australians to manage the impacts of rising fuel prices and providing reliable and affordable public transport is a key part of that,” the state transport minister, Rita Saffioti, said.
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