Rail ‘well poised’ to meet national transport challenges

While rail can offer a number of solutions to national transport challenges relating to climate change, post peak oil, moving goods and people in congested cities and safety, Dimopoulos emphasised the importance for the industry to grow as part of an integrated system.
Addressing delegates at the recent AusRAIL PLUS conference, he said that it is time to face some “hard truths” about climate change: transport is the largest polluter behind stationary energy and agriculture and the fastest growing.
With Australia’s freight task expected to triple over the next 30-40 years, rail is “well poised” to play a key part in moving freight and people, in turn, addressing climate change issues, Dimopoulos said.
“In simple terms, one freight train can take about 150 semitrailers off the road and each passenger train takes about 500 cars off the road,” he said.
With 90 per cent of the world’s transport systems oil dependant and petroleum-based fuels meeting more than 97 per cent of total transport needs in Australia, Dimopoulos said that rail is a “no brainer” in a post-peak oil world.
“This is because rail is by far the cheapest and most fuel-efficient form of transport requiring as little as three per cent of the energy of freight,” he said.
Congested cities will continue to remain another major national transport challenge.
Two-thirds of Australia’s economic growth is derived from productivity. Productivity is dependent on the free flow of goods and people within cities, yet congestion is already a $10 billion “deadweight loss” to the economy and a problem that is expected to double, even triple over the next 10 years if nothing is done, he said.
“As our roads become increasingly congested, our population more urbanised and climate change forces us to be more environmentally responsible, rail offers a number of solutions to an integrated transport system,” Dimopoulos said.
“Rail is an important part of the network and should capitalise on the opportunities at hand, but the transport system will only operate safely, productively and effectively when we have all modes working together in harmony – in other words, seamless connectivity and delivering optimum outcomes for customers.”
While “things are already happening”, including unprecedented federal investment in passenger rail and some “promising developments” for the freight industry, the NTC has identified that further productivity reform in the rail sector is essential to ensure rail plays its part in servicing Australia’s growing freight task.
The NTC’s recent Rail Freight Productivity Review found that further productivity reform in the rail sector is essential. Issues such as ad-hoc investment that has not been guided by long-term planning by government and industry; variation of access and pricing regulation; and a lack of integration for track and terminal access must be addressed.
Reform needs to include road infrastructure pricing that provides the same price signals as rail; transparent customer service obligations; track owners being responsive to user-needs – possibly through vertical integration; fair access to strategically located rail terminals; and rail productivity data benchmarked against world’s best practice.
“The result will be a sustainable, growing rail system that adapts to industry needs, with better track speeds, quicker transit times, higher axle weights; and improved service and reliability,” Dimopoulos said.
While there has been significant progress in national rail safety reform with the development and approval by COAG, of a single national rail safety regulator, Dimopoulos made the point that freight transport issues inherently include those of moving people, yet Australia does not have a national “moving people” strategy.
 “Moving people is an important discussion that we need to start having as nation,” Dimopoulos said.
“The fact that a national approach is being raised through the work of the industry associations...recent Senate inquiries and the establishment of the Major Cities Unit in Infrastructure Australia area all positive indications that ‘moving people’ is on the agenda.”
While he believes that the time for a fully integrated transport system is coming, Dimopoulos said Australia has a long way to go in establishing truly integrated transport policies that address the current environmental, economic and social challenges that we face.
“The current opportunities for rail must not be lost by continuing to make only short-term fixes and incremental changes, and isolating policy for different transport modes,” he said.