New reports provide rail industry insights

The three reports providing rail industry background are:

Understanding Australia’s urban railways is a 122 page report providing an overview of provides an overview of the urban passenger and freight railways in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. For passenger rail, the report explores service provision; patronage trends; and the key challenges facing each system. In addition, the report seeks to explain the role of rail in each city’s transport task by examining the main characteristics of each city's rail network including: the extent of the freight/passenger rail interface; and recent and planned network expansion.

TrainLine 1 is a collaborative report between the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) and BITRE. It is a further development of the previous rail freight performance publications series. This report provides an overview of rail freight performance, railway infrastructure standards and freight haulage between 2007–08 and 2009–10. Further development of the range of information is envisaged. The report is split into three sections that provide freight market, freight train and track indicators.

Australian Infrastructure Statistics - Yearbook 2012 provides a single comprehensive source of Australian infrastructure time series statistics for measures of transport, energy, communications and water infrastructure and the use of this infrastructure in Australia. Statistics are presented in a coherent framework that enables comparisons across the four forms of infrastructure and the activities associated with each form of infrastructure.

All three reports can be downloaded in PDF format by visiting the BITRE web site www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2012/index.aspx