Freight Rail, Research & Development

Cross-metro shuttles ‘biggest challenge’ for Sydney freight

Container rail into Port Botany. Photo: Sydney Ports

Boosting the competitiveness of short-haul shuttles in the metropolitan region is the biggest challenge in the Australian Rail Track Corporation’s ‘roadmap’ for Sydney’s rail freight.

The ARTC last week released its 2015-2024 Sydney Metropolitan Freight Strategy.

According to the paper, available on the ARTC’s website, “cross-metro container shuttles represent the single biggest challenge” facing the corporation, which owns Sydney’s Metropolitan Freight Network, along with the NSW Interstate and Hunter Valley rail networks, in New South Wales.

ARTC chief executive John Fullerton said recent announcements regarding new rail freight and intermodal operations in Sydney made a strategy for boosting rail freight in the region even more relevant.

“The key to a more liveable Sydney and enabling more freight volumes to flow more efficiently,” Fullerton said, “is having a clear roadmap for the city’s wider rail freight network.”

Fullerton, ARTC chief since February 2011, said the corporation was well placed in the supply chain to lead the discussion around the current and future needs of rail freight.

He said the strategy, released on October 22, was the first step to achieving that discussion.

“No other transport mode has the existing capacity available for the rapidly increasing freight task and the ability to have an immediate impact on traffic congestion that currently gridlocks the city.

“ARTC is in a unique position of being the one organisation that has significant operational involvement in import/export container logistics, while not having conflicting commercial interests.”

It is from that position the ARTC has identified cross-metro shuttles – between intermodal terminals and port facilities – as the primary concern going forward.

According to the ARTC the Port Botany Landside Improvement Scheme (PBLIS) – launched by the state government in 2010 to combat truck congestion – did such a good job of improving the efficiency of road freight, it actually hurt the growth of rail.

“PBLIS has had the impact of making road transportation more efficient and significantly reduced congestion around Port Botany,” the report states.

“Anecdotally this had the effect of making rail less competitive.

“Concerns have been expressed by various groups over a long period of time that there is not a compelling commercial proposition in all cases for cross-metropolitan container services.”

While the report seeks to deliver some compelling commercial advantages to rail over road, it also identifies some existing and potential future incentive programs to promote rail.

“Rail market share of Botany container movements has stagnated despite the aspirations of many stakeholders,” the ARTC observes.

“Ultimately, to achieve the desired growth in rail market share there is a need for there to be an alignment of commercial interests and the right incentives to make rail a worthwhile option.”

Eliminating additional handling for railed containers at stevedore terminals is one measure suggested by the report.

“At present, all rail containers incur an extra lift in the port relative to road operations,” the paper finds.

“Typically, terminals are designed to take a container from a road vehicle and place it in a stack, or vice versa. For a rail movement, a truck or intra-terminal vehicle is used to take the container to and from the rail siding with this vehicle then processed essentially as a truck movement would be.

“This, of course, then requires another lift to or from the train.”

A full analysis of the ARTC’s paper will feature in the AusRAIL print edition of Rail Express.