Changing climate and weather patterns in recent years have highlighted the importance of a resilient rail network, not only for the benefit of the industries that rail supports but for the communities across Australia that rely on rail for access to essential goods and services.
The unpredictability, frequency, and intensity of weather events is projected to rise in the coming years, and the rail network’s vulnerability to these events also increases as networks and populations grow.
Embedding resilience within an organisation has become a necessity, not only for business continuity, but for the wellbeing of Australian communities as a whole.
However, there is currently no national resilience framework for the rail industry in Australia.
Rail organisations are therefore addressing resilience in an ad-hoc manner, typically independently from one another. This not only creates a burden of work and resourcing on an individual organisation but can result in unnecessary overlap between organisations with similar risk profiles conducting the same assessments separately.
While national and state-based frameworks do exist for disaster risk reduction, these are generic frameworks which encompass resilience for the community as a whole and are not targeted to a specific industry or sector.
What is the ARA doing to address resilience in rail?
The ARA’s Sustainability Committee is currently working with members through its Resilience Working Group to develop an industry-first Resilience Framework, which aims to outline practical focus areas and key considerations for building resilience in an Australasian rail-specific context. The framework will serve as a tool to guide an organisation’s strategic thinking, linking resilience to the wide range of assets, systems and processes which make up the rail industry.
The framework will also offer metrics for measuring and monitoring resilience progress, allowing organisations to report on successful initiatives and identify areas where further attention is required. Having tangible, trackable metrics provides greater visibility to resilience projects – encouraging buy-in and simplifying communication.
It will be flexible to enable organisations to select and adapt the relevant aspects and metrics for their unique risk profile. The framework will offer value to organisations with no previous experience in resilience looking to implement preliminary measures, as well as more advanced organisations seeking to cross-check existing plans and practices against industry best practice.
It will also reduce the burden of research placed on individual members and offer an opportunity for organisations to coordinate and align their resilience efforts with the wider industry.
Why is a national framework for resilience in rail critical?
Major flooding events in the past few years have illustrated the importance of resilient rail infrastructure. In January 2022, flooding impacted more than 300 kilometres of track between Crystal Brook, South Australia and Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, leading to an unprecedented 24-day outage on the east-west line.
Beyond the significant cost of repair in response to this flooding event, the outage significantly impacted supply chains, leading to shortages on supermarket shelves, as well as affecting business and industry, at an estimate cost to the economy of $320 million.
In early 2024, this same rail corridor experienced another three-week outage due to flooding. This event caused major strain on the supply of essential grocery items and food supplies to Western Australia and added to cost-of-living pressures on local communities.
Around the same time, flooding in New South Wales resulted in track washouts requiring extensive repair, and abnormally high rainfall in Queensland necessitated the temporary suspension of both passenger and freight lines in the region.
In the face of events such as these, how can you tell when resilience is going right? Resilience is notoriously hard to measure – how do you record the benefits of not being impacted by an event, of not experiencing flood damage, or of not needing to shut down a rail corridor?
Looking at recent events can shed some light on the importance of getting this right. Consider the very recent experience and impacts of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred in Queensland and New South Wales.
Sections of track and supporting infrastructure were closed for several days as flooding, heavy rain and extreme winds impacted the area. While the economic costs stemming from the various track shutdown periods and repairs will take time to fully realise, what is immediately obvious is that the impacts were not nearly as severe as they had the potential to be, with operations restored on most parts of the affected network after a few days.
So why was Alfred different? For one, ample warning of the cyclone’s approach and pathway enabled an “all-hands-on-deck” approach from rail operators, who could prepare their networks with targeted stockpiles of essential repair materials and power generators and relocate their rollingstock assets to safe locations. Early warning also enabled advance and clear communication with impacted passengers and freight users on when tracks and stations would be shut down, keeping community members and employees out of harm’s way. This preparedness and the associated impact reduction paints a clear picture of resilience in rail.
Recent funding commitments
A 2021 report from Deloitte Access Economics titled Special report: Update to the economic costs of natural disasters in Australia estimated the costs of disasters to the Australian economy are currently $38 billion per year, and this annual figure could reach $73 billion by 2060.
However, it is also estimated that for every dollar invested in disaster risk reduction, the Australian economy reaps a $9.60 return on investment. This is not only attributable to cost savings from the reduced need for repair and rebuilding of physical infrastructure, but also the flow-on health and social benefits from reduced damage to property and livelihoods.
In 2024, the Australian Government committed more than $1 billion in investment to enhance the resilience of the rail network. This money will be used to fund critical infrastructure upgrades at key sections of the rail lines, enabling the network to withstand impacts from more extreme weather.
Infrastructure upgrades can take a variety of forms, depending on the nature of the hazards they are designed to withstand. One example is the installation of newer, larger culverts, which can divert significant volumes of flood water under rail lines in areas which would have otherwise been washed out.
Improved monitoring and detection systems are also important to provide early warning when unexpected water level rises are detected on track. Another option is upgrading the tracks themselves to better withstand the extreme temperatures experienced during a heatwave or bushfire to enable faster travel speeds and reduce the risk of buckling.
But resilience isn’t only about construction and physical modifications. To embed true resilience into a system, as demonstrated in the Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred example, requires focused considerations across all aspects of a business or organisation, from people and culture to governance, interdependencies with other systems and asset maintenance and life cycle management.
The rail network is not simply a transport system. Rail connects people to family, education, and employment. Rail moves food, energy, resources, and crucial exports. The impact of disasters to the rail industry are not limited to transport disruption, but include the cumulative effects which impact supply chains, food security, and community recovery.
No two weather events are ever the same, but high-quality, resilient rail infrastructure provides a greater chance of efficient recovery, offers supply chain redundancies via alternative routes and networks, and presents a long-term solution to the ever-changing threats posed by our warming climate.
Resilient rail is resilient transport and will form a keystone piece in the resilience of Australia as a whole.
