The elasticity of travel in Canberra has been measured for the last transport survey in Canberra. This analysis showed that trip generation in Canberra had an elasticity of 0.28. However although there is an increase in public transport travel there is NOT a corresponding decrease in private car travel. One of the reasons for this is that low cost public transport will attract more passengers to make discretionary trips for recreation and the like. Many existing public transport users are also subsidised eg pensioners, unemployed etc and making trips leads to increased social opportunities for these groups in particular.
Many workers also require the use of their vehicle for business purposes.
This relationship suggests that there would be insufficient space on the arterial road network to carry this off peak traffic in reasonable conditions if the network were to be too restricted.