Transport in Tasmania Introduction

The transport system is pivotal to Tasmania's economic and social well-being.

As an island state, Tasmania is dependent on sea and air transport for interstate and overseas movement of goods and passengers. As well, with the most regionally-based population of all Australian states, Tasmania relies on effective transport systems to link its regions.

The main features of the Tasmanian transport task are:

• The transport and storage industry contributes about 4.5 per cent to the Tasmanian Gross State Product (GSP)
• Each week, the average Tasmanian household spends about $97 on transport, which is about 15% of average total household expenditure
• There are more than 320,000 licensed drivers and over 400,000 registered vehicles
  Tasmanian vehicles annually travel a total of over 4,300 million kilometres, or about 14,000 kilometres per registration
• One third of kilometres travelled is for business purposes
• Each year, the Tasmanian road freight task is over 2,200 million tonne-kilometres
• Tasmania has 867 kilometres of rail network which carries substantial tonnages of bulk goods and heavy freight
• Over 14 million tonnes of freight passes through Tasmania's sea ports annually
• Over 320,000 sea passengers travel to or from Tasmania annually
• Over 1,700,000 air passengers travel to or from Tasmania annually.