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Overweight passengers blamed for pavement woes

By Chris Champion posted 16-11-2016 20:09

  

Citizens' burgeoning waistlines are reportedly increasing the strain on road infrastructure and public transport. 

Brisbane City Council City Planning and Economic Development Manager Kerry Doss told the Courier Mail that overweight bus passengers were not only pushing the state's 16-tonne mass limit for buses, but also wearing down Brisbane’s roads.

The average Australian bus passenger, who weighed 65kg in 1989, now weighs about 78kg.

“Because the average weight of a passenger is increasing, if you load a bus up fully, it actually exceeds weight limits for pavements,” he told the paper.

“You’ve got to start thinking about those things because that means you’ve got to build a stronger road pavement.”

Roads and buses aren't the only things the changing demographic is affecting – crematoriums are also impacted. 

“Because people are getting bigger, the incinerators we have in our crematoriums need bigger doors, and as the cremation is taking a longer time, the incinerators are getting too hot,” Doss says. 

Australia’s bus industry has been campaigning for increased bus mass limits for several years. 

A 2014 National Transport Commission paper suggested the allowable limit for two-axle buses should be raised from 16 tonnes to 18 tonnes, which is already the limit in some states.

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