$500 million for walking and cycling! Here’s how Better Streets members succeeded
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For years, walking and cycling have been treated as the loose change of Australia’s transport budget.
A 2025 Conversation article put the imbalance in brutally simple terms: the Australian Government was spending around $714 per person each year on roads, while walking, wheeling and cycling received just $0.90 per person annually. The article asked what would happen if that figure rose to $5, $10 or $15 per person.
Better Streets decided to answer that question politically.
Ahead of the 2025 federal election, we launched a campaign calling for a National Active Transport Infrastructure Program, asking the Australian Government to invest $400 million a year, or $15 per person annually, during the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport from 2026 to 2035.
The proposal was practical: deliver complete walking and cycling networks in regional cities and growth areas, fund cycling superhighways in major capitals, expand e-bike subsidies, build safe routes to schools, and create a dedicated federal delivery unit. Better Streets showed that this small investment could unlock around $40 billion in economic benefits.
The open letter was signed and supported by more than 100 organisations including motoring bodies, professional organisations, peak industry bodies, academia and small businesses, as well as walking, cycling, place, health and climate change NGOs. We worked in partnership with We Ride Australia, WalkSydney, Bicycle NSW, Bicycle Network, WestCycle, Transport Professionals Association, Planning Institute and many others to directly contact politicians around the country.
Our powerful campaign video helped put faces and voices to the policy. It turned a spreadsheet problem into something more human: the daily reality of parents, children, older people, workers and communities trying to move around safely.
And people responded. They wrote hundreds of emails to their representatives asking them to commit. Around 150 individuals added their personal stories.
By the end of the campaign, 240 election candidates had signed the pledge. More than 100 organisations signed the Open Letter, including professional bodies, health groups, climate organisations, walking and cycling groups, local businesses and the Australian Automobile Association, representing 9.3 million drivers. At least 6 MPs and 11 Senators elected had signed the pledge.
Then came the result: in May 2026 the Australian Government announced $500 million over 10 years for walking and cycling infrastructure. That doubles national funding from around $0.90 to $1.80 per person annually. It is still far short of the $15 per person benchmark Better Streets called for, and tiny beside road spending. Yet it is a real shift. As We Ride reports, “It seems clear that the Minister is determined to have a significant impact quickly with the Active Transport Fund, which follows last year’s runaway success of the previous $100 million fund. $90.2 million has been allocated for 2026-27, $75.3 million has been allocated for 2027-28 and $68.8 million the year after.” That is an incredible success.
This is what successful advocacy looks like: strong evidence, coalition-building, election pressure from hundreds of individuals and organisations,, sharp and targeted communications, and sheer persistence.
While we didn’t get everything we asked for, we won something that had previously seemed impossible.
Our next move is a motion that will be put up by Waverley Council to the Australian Local Government national general assembly in June, asking for more funding to help local governments deliver and maintain walking and cycling infrastructure. We Ride will follow up by hosting an event at Parliament House in Canberra in August.
Huge thanks to everyone involved in this campaign, including Sam Johnson, Matthew McClaughlin, Sara Stace, Jullietta Jung, Stephen Hodge, Michael Power, Kirsty Dare, Brooke Thompson, Tegan Mitchell and hundreds of others. We’re incredibly grateful.
Proposed Cycleway Network (source: Bicycle NSW / Better Streets Northern Beaches)
Photo: Artistic Render of the Curl Curl - Freshwater Cycleway (source: Northern Beaches Council)
