Future population boom good for rail?

By Mark Carter

It seems hard to put into any real context and despite the prediction coming from the Federal Government itself, it is also hard to imagine politicians of any political persuasion giving up short term electoral success to focus seriously on the long term strategies required to deal with such a population increase.
Leaving aside the aging demographic of any predicted population increase for the moment, from a transport infrastructure perspective it will mean further pressure on rail, road and air networks over the coming decades. Obviously some serious planning needs to be undertaken, and now would be a good time. This is especially when viewed against the additional backdrops provided by emissions trading and future fuel scarcity.
No doubt the political spin doctors will be arguing that the current round of stimulus funding is already laying the foundations for the future. Unfortunately the reality is that a lot of the government infrastructure investment we are seeing at the moment, with some exceptions, is mainly a catch-up for years of previous neglect.
So what needs to be done in order to ensure rail plays its part in coping with the future demand placed upon transport infrastructure by this burgeoning population?
The current economic downturn aside, freight growth has continued to outstrip economic growth for many years now. There has been the much vaunted talk of a doubling of this growth within the next decade and even if the numbers have tended to shift around a bit, these new population estimates put such predictions into a much clearer perspective.
While the current round of interstate rail infrastructure spending is laying the groundwork for rail to better cope with predicted increases, it is also being used to get rail back to where it should have been in the first place.
Even with the investment in the North South corridor, in the medium to longer term the Sydney to Brisbane leg of the corridor will be unable to efficiently cope with the anticipated increases in freight demand beyond the next decade.
While a good deal of initial planning work has been done, and continues to be done, on laying the foundation for a Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Route, there have been concerns of late that the commitment for this project in the corridors of power seems to have waned in favour of the existing East Coast route. Some serious commitment to the Inland Route is required in the very near future if freight demand continues to rise in line with these new population projections.
On the urban front, road congestion in our cities is already reaching seriously high levels with estimates of the community cost running into the billions of dollars. The recent Federal funding commitments to urban rail projects are most welcome and in some cases go beyond just plain catch up infrastructure improvements and will indeed cater for future population growth.
Unfortunately this appears to be totally lost upon the good citizens of Newcastle who, seeking defy all the trends relating to population, congestion, fuel scarcity and carbon emissions, still want to remove the railway from the heart of the city. In a rush to satisfy the land hungry lust of developers and create a short-lived piece of tinsel and flash, it will ultimately become a global lesson in how not to approach urban transport planning in the 21st Century.
Taking a lead from last month’s column, it would be safe to assume that a 75 per cent jump in population is going to create a huge jump in domestic air travel. This will exacerbate concerns over the continuing high CO2 emission levels of the airline industry and also the location of new airport facilities to cater for increased demand.
A high-speed rail corridor linking Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne has the potential to offset these concerns and substantially reduced travelling times offered by high-speed rail have the potential to open up the new areas required by an expanding population for commuting into major cities.
As an example, in the South East of England the recently introduced high-speed ‘Javelin’ services that use the existing high speed link from the Channel Tunnel have cut domestic commuter journey times to London by up to two thirds.
As mentioned last month high-speed rail cannot continue to be an afterthought. The relatively high costs and long lead time for high-speed rail projects means that some initial planning and budgeting needs to start now.
To end on a slightly flippant note, and to just to touch on the aging issue which has been part of the focus of the new population figures, one can imagine there will be an awful lot more grey nomads out on the open road with their caravans in the future taking their chances with ever increasing numbers of B-double and B-triple heavy vehicles. The road safety implications don’t really bear thinking about, but if we start planning now for rail to play its part in alleviating the situation, then so much the better.