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Infrastructure Australia just doesn't seem to have a grasp on reality when it comes to land transport.

Its National Infrastructure Priorities lists seven “themes” which are supposed to “...provide a framework for action to meet the gaps, deficiencies and bottlenecks in our nation's infrastructure”.

And neither the national road network nor urban road freight networks rate a mention.

But Infrastructure Australia does mention a national rail freight network and calls for the “development of our rail networks so that more freight can be moved by rail”.

Nice. And I'm sure most people share those sentiments. But rail's role in non-bulk freight transport is clearly ancillary to that of road transport. And it would continue to be so even if rail's freight volume quadrupled.

Putting ALL long distance land freight on rail would not materially affect the need for urban road freight networks because that's how non-bulk freight (and an increasing percentage of bulk freight) gets to and from rail in the first place.

Road transport carries the vast majority of the nation's non-bulk land freight task and the Productivity Commission and National Transport Commission say that only 13-15 per cent of that freight is contestable between the modes.

The Productivity Commission also say that even loading up costs onto road transport (rail's Holy Grail, think extenalities, peak oil, global warming etc) would not precipitate any significant shift to rail.

Was Infrastructure Australia's failure to even mention the road network in its priority list a fluke or oversight?

Apparently not, for Infrastructure Australia even parrots the Australian Rail Track Corporation's relentless push to splash more taxpayer's money on a second best rail route between Melbourne and Brisbane via the transport black hole of Sydney.

They place the “Northern Sydney Freight Line” and “various rail deviation projects” on the hilly NSW North Coast in the “Priority Infrastructure Pipeline-projects with real potential”.

Worse they even resort to the hoary old rail chestnut of “steam age alignments” to justify spending hideous amounts of other people's money to straighten the North Coast rail leg.

Given such apparent priorities, federal government infrastructure investments would flow to the road network only begrudgingly.

That would be plain stupid, economically and politically.

Everyone in Australia uses the road networks and it is important to remember that those networks would largely be the same even if no trucks existed.

The federal government itself has announced it will pour money into the cities for the first time to reduce road traffic congestion which costs the economy billions of dollars every year.

There are gaps in road freight networks in all major cities that need to be filled in.

And then there's the sham of a Pacific Highway that services Sydney-Brisbane along the same corridor as East Coast rail but with one glaring difference.

Trucks on the Pacific also serve the fast growing cities and towns all along the coast while freight trains roar right through and never stop, serving only the capital cities.

The Pacific Highway is the transport backbone of the fastest growing coastal strip in Australia and it continues to languish.

Given Infrastructure Australia's stated priorities, how long will it be before the Pacific Highway is freeway standard bypassing town centres and adequate for moving freight and for safely catering to the personal transport needs of several million people in the corridor?

Infrastructure Austraila needs a second look at the priorities expressed in its seven themes.

The lack of commitment to roads expressed there is not politically or economically sustainable.