Central body needed to coordinate rail freight reform – Part One

By Francis Dwornik

The NTC report  released in August, predicts rail volumes could double by 2030 but recognises productivity as a major impediment to its growth.
Involving more groups, such as Infrastructure Australia (IA) in the process is not the answer.  A single authority must take command of this problem or change will not occur quickly enough with the result creating long term environmental and infrastructure problems.
Australia’s various freight industries are all struggling under the mountains of red-tape and undue cost and time losses that were inherited from the state legislative divisions of Federation, impacting profitability and productivity. This adds up to 10 per cent to the cost of goods we buy, according to the NTC report.
Without a single authority charged with the reforms by all states and territories we will continue to drown in inefficient practices and continue to lose ground to rail’s polluting and heavily subsidised road competitors.
The five most pressing issues for Australian freight are:
.Upgrade the freight links between Melbourne and Adelaide;
.Create a rail link from Brisbane to the Adelaide-Darwin line;
.Make the Adelaide-Darwin line profitable by focussing on rail tonnage and access to ports;
.Develop the inland rail between Melbourne and Brisbane with a major interchange at Parkes; and
.Continue to improve the line between Melbourne and Sydney in line with the South Improvement Alliance
Without these additional lines the rail freight industry will not be competing in its most productive sectors and will lose ground.
At issue are not just productivity problems but a lack of investment that has seen the Australian rail industry grow in line with its population distribution of 100 years ago.
The five critical investment areas I have outlined will go a long way toward redressing the balance toward the new demand centres.
As was noted by the Productivity Commission’s (PC) separate report, released mid-2009, Australia’s economic performance is closely  linked to  the efficiency of its transport sector, due to the long distances between population and production centres.
It also observed that Australia’s rail network alone presently is overseen by seven state and territory regulators, with different access costs and safety laws applicable in each state. This is significant given the high percentage of rail freight movements (80 per cent on a tonne-kilometres travelled basis) that are interstate, due to the movement required of commodities such as coal.
The PC report acknowledged that while the Federal Government has tried to create a defined interstate rail network run by the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) body, a major issue remains in inconsistent state-by-state approaches to safety regulation with rail operators requiring multiple accreditations to cross borders. There are also overlaps between rail safety and OHS legislation.
In a survey by the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) members estimated that the direct cost of complying to duplication and overlaps in rail safety regulation was costing $42 million to the whole industry.
The recent NTC review focuses on productivity, with a call for better track speeds, faster transit times, higher axle weights and improved service and flexibility. For one, it recommends open access regulation for key rail terminals, and pricing reform so that truck charges do not unfairly disadvantage rail.
It is clear that a central body needs to be established to bring Australia’s rail freight network up to this speed and to take advantage of the tremendous infrastructure opportunities available at this time.

For Part Two of this story, click here.

Francis Dwornik is O’Donnell Griffin Rail’s (ODG) director rail engineering. He has helped realise a number of key projects for the ODG Rail team including rail infrastructure work on the Southern Suburbs Rail project in WA; ‘mine to market' projects such as BHP Billiton's Rapid Growth Phase project; the South Improvement Alliance for ARTC’s Melbourne to Sydney rail corridor upgrade; and more recently, the NovoRail Alliance partnership with RailCorp.