Track access pricing distortion favours freight over passenger: GSR

<p>Long distance passenger trains are paying over the odds for track access, Great Southern Railway (GSR) chief executive Tony Braxton-Smith said.</p> <p>Mr Braxton-Smith told delegates at this morning’s AusRAIL PLUS 2005 conference in Sydney that track access regimes where unfairly weighted towards freight trains.</p> <p>"I want to put track access regimes squarely on the agenda," he said.</p> <p>GSR, which operates passenger services including the Ghan and Indian Pacific, was paying about 15% of ticket revenue to access track whereas freight trains were paying just 8-9% of their revenue, Mr Braxton-Smith said.</p> <p>Long-distance passenger services were operating lighter trains that caused less wear and tear, they were typically about one third the length of freight trains and needed about two-thirds of the transit time to complete a section of track compared to a freight train.</p> <p>Passenger services also had much higher operating costs, such as the wage costs for catering staff.</p> <p>"They [track owners&#93 have not given sufficient consideration of market capacity to pay," he said.</p> <br />