Strategic context | Contents
Strategic context The macroeconomic environment – as well as trends in the transport and infrastructure sector – present growth opportunities and potential challenges for our business. These factors shape the way we go about delivering on our strategic objectives to create value for our stakeholders and operate efficiently, to enable continued growth.
As populations grow and infrastructure demand rises, the sector continues to show long-term resilience, consistently performing across economic and geopolitical shifts and offering stable opportunities for investment and growth. Key transport sector trends remained consistent in FY25, even as global instability heightened in the face of growing trade tensions, shifting economic policies and geopolitical conflicts. In the private sector, technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) continue to gain momentum, while competition to produce lower-emission vehicles such as electric vehicles (EVs) intensifies. Infrastructure supply and demand The cities in which Transurban operates are expected to have population growth between 10% and 38% by 2045. 1 For example, Victoria’s population is forecast to grow by over one million people each decade for the next 30 years. 1 In August 2025, a Transurban survey found that almost 70% of Australian respondents were concerned about current levels of traffic congestion, with 77% fearing it will be worse in a decade’s time. 2 In the United States (US), 58% were worried about congestion now. 2
In Northern Virginia, increasing return-to- office mandates and notorious traffic congestion have seen a revival of coordinated
The shortfall in roads funding is being felt in other countries. In New Zealand, its Infrastructure Commission has identified NZD204 billion of required infrastructure spend, most of which is unfunded. 9 Private investment through public-private partnerships (PPPs) is a funding mechanism that can relieve governments from the burden of up-front infrastructure spending. Following the success of the PPP model in Australia, the New Zealand Government held an infrastructure summit in March this year aiming to attract private investment and partnerships. In NSW alone, Transurban and our partners have invested more than $36 billion 10 into Sydney’s road network and in the US we have PPPs with the Virginian Government with the first Express Lanes project having opened in 2012. Uptake of EVs, hybrid vehicles Governments face declining revenue from what has traditionally been a primary source for road funding – fuel excise (or gas tax in the US) – as the shift to EVs and more fuel-efficient vehicles gains momentum. EVs made up more than 20% of global car sales in 2024 with advances in battery technology and competition among auto manufacturers, particularly from China, underpinning further growth. 11 Despite the US Federal Government revoking a target for EVs to make up 50% of all new vehicles sales by 2030, 12 most Australian State governments – including NSW, Victoria and Queensland – have set a target for 50% of new car sales to be EVs by around 2030. 13
carpooling with strangers, known as “slugging”, where commuters wait at
designated locations to share a car ride and use our Express Lanes, which are free for vehicles with three or more passengers. Drivers in the Washington DC region are reported to have lost 62 hours in congestion on average throughout 2024. 3 Across the country, it is estimated that more than four billion hours were lost due to congestion, costing USD74 billion. 3 To meet the needs of growing populations, governments face mounting demands for more housing, services and infrastructure, while at the same time they are also under pressure to prioritise renewable energy projects and address ongoing cost-of-living concerns. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that global public debt would exceed $100 trillion in 2024 4 and has forecast an increase in debt of 2.8 percentage points in 2025 – more than twice the estimates for 2024. 5 In the US, the funding gap to maintain and improve roads has been estimated at USD684 billion over the next 10 years 6 while Australia has a $213 billion five-year Major Public Infrastructure Pipeline – planned and active major upgrades to the nation’s infrastructure. 7 Skills shortages, stagnant productivity growth, and rising material costs are also creating challenges for infrastructure delivery in Australia. 8
1 DAE, Land Use Forecasts, September 2024; Oxford Economics, June 2025 2 Transurban, Urban Mobility Trends Industry Report, August 2025 3 INRIX, 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard, accessed May 2025
4 International Monetary Fund, Fiscal Monitor: Putting a Lid on Public Debt, October 2024 5 International Monetary Fund, Fiscal Monitor: Fiscal Policy Under Uncertainty, April 2025 6 American Society of Civil Engineers, A Comprehensive Assessment of America’s Infrastructure: 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, March 2025 7 Infrastructure Australia, 2024 Infrastructure Market Capacity Report, December 2024 8 Infrastructure Australia, Governments shift infrastructure investment priorities while market capacity constraints continue, December 2024 9 The Conversation, Hey big spenders: what foreign investors will really want from the infrastructure summit, 12 March 2025 10 Transurban, NSW Independent Toll Review Interim Report: Transurban response (page 8), 14 May 2024
11 International Energy Agency, Global EV Outlook 2024, April 2024 12 International Energy Agency, Global EV Outlook 2025, May 2025 13 Electric Vehicle Council, State of Electric Vehicles 2024 (page 62), December 2024
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